Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

EDINBURGH CORPORATION BILL

Read the Third time and passed.

GREENOCK BURGH EXTENSION &C. ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

Read a Second time; to be considered Tomorrow.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE

Merchandise Marks Acts (Advertisements)

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware of the indignation of the silk industry concerning recent advertisement for a fabric, the name of which has been sent to him, in which it is claimed that this material wears like silk at a third of the price, in breach of the Merchandise Marks Acts; and what action he proposes to take in the matter, under the Merchandise Marks Acts, following the evidence submitted to him by the hon. Member for Coventry, South, on 1st March last.

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Thorneycroft): I have received no complaints from the silk industry on this subject, and I do not find either in the advertisement or in the evidence submitted by the hon. Lady grounds for action under the Merchandise Marks Acts.

Miss Burton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many complaints have been made by the silk industry, if they have not come to him? Further, after what he has just told me, may I ask him whether it is the policy of the

Government that claims about the wearing properties of materials which have been proved false do not infringe the Merchandise Marks Acts?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I will look at any complaints put before me, but we must not complain too much if British textile manufacturers do praise their own products. I think they are entitled to do so.

Miss Burton: Is the right hon. Gentleman also aware that I sent him the materials, that one material was silk, and that the price of the cheaper material was not one-third of that, but much more than half? Does he consider that a true statement?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I thought that this Question had to do with quality, but if there was some statement about price, shall be glad to look into it.

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware of the concern felt by the British Dental Association at the continuing display of misleading advertisements by some toothpaste manufacturers; and if he will take action, under the Merchandise Marks Acts, following the second submission of evidence made to him by the hon. Member for Coventry, South, on 5th March last.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I thank the hon. Lady for the evidence which she sent me on 5th March. It is not, however, of itself sufficient upon which to base a prosecution. Further steps are being taken to see whether all the available evidence justifies the institution of proceedings.

Miss Burton: While being grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the crumbs of comfort given in the last part of his reply, may I ask him if he is aware that these Questions in the House and his consideration are already having some effect on these advertisements, and that we on these benches would welcome further action?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am glad that we are being so successful.

Pottery Industry

Mr. Ellis Smith: asked the President of the Board of Trade what action he will take to ensure that the stocks of pottery which are being built up in the City of


Stoke-on-Trent and the stocks of manufactured china in Longton are used to increase our export trade.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I have no reason to believe that the pottery manufacturers are not continuing to take advantage of every export opportunity that presents itself. The services of my Department are, of course, constantly available to give them all possible assistance.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Is the President aware that, as a result of the recent policy of the Government, even the best of the manufacturers are having to build up huge stocks rather than put their operatives on short time, and that they are hoping that the Government will take action to help them to dispose of those stocks? What action does the President intend taking?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am aware that there is some short time in the pottery industry, and that these stocks are tending to mount. The situation differs in different parts of the industry, and, as I have said, the services of my Department are available for any export help that I can give.

Mr. Ellis Smith: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that employment and standards of the workers in the pottery industry, and the large-scale modernisation and investments of that industry, depend upon the maintenance of the industry's traditional foreign markets; and whether he will take urgent action to safeguard those markets.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I am aware that the well-being of the pottery industry depends on the maintenance of its foreign markets. These markets can only be safeguarded by a combination of the expansionist commercial policy pursued by the Government and competitiveness on the part of the industry.

Mr. Ellis Smith: That reply does not get us very far, as the President himself knows. Is he also aware that we are running into great difficulty as a result of the intervention of other competitors? Has not the time arrived when the President should consider taking some concrete and constructive action to assist the industry to maintain our traditional markets?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I think the best help we can give is to try to hold the markets as widely open as possible so that the pottery industry can take advantage of them.

Motor Cycle Industry

Mr. Chapman: asked the President of the Board of Trade what action he proposes to take in order to relieve unemployment in the motor cycle industry.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Figures of employment in the motor cycle industry are not available. I understand, however, that there has been some marginal decrease in the number of people employed in this industry. I do not accept the implication that a given level of employment in a particular industry should necessarily be maintained.

Mr. Chapman: Nor does anyone else, but does not this mean that, as in the motor car industry, it is a case of "no interest, no action, no policy, no anything"?

Mr. Thorneycroft: No, Sir, nor am I at all clear what action the hon. Gentleman is proposing.

Mr. Nabarro: Is it not a fact that the motor cycle industry is for the most part centred in the Midlands and that in the Midlands area there are at present 46,000 vacancies for jobs out of a total insured population of two million?

Mr. Thorneycroft: It is true that there are a number of unfilled vacancies in the Midlands area, but these matters were widely debated in the discussion in the House on Tuesday.

Mr. Bottomley: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the Government have no responsibility in this matter and that it is for the employers to push the workers around?

Mr. Thorneycroft: What I said was that no Government, surely, of any political persuasion, can ever accept the position that the number of men in a particular industry should always stay the same. That would lead to the freezing of the whole of British industry.

United Kingdom and Irish Republic

Captain Orr: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the Eireann Government have placed


a tariff of 50 per cent. on cables exported from the United Kingdom; what restrictions are placed on imports of cables from Eire; and what representations he has made in this matter.

Mr. H. Hynd: On a point of order. This Question refers to Eire and the Eireann Government. Should it not be the Republic of Ireland?

Mr. Speaker: As long as the sense is intelligible the words are not so very important.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: The following is the reply. Ever since 1934 there has been a duty of 50 per cent. on certain classes of electric cables and wires imported into the Irish Republic from any source. There are no restrictions on imports into the United Kingdom of cables from the Republic. No representations have been made on this matter.

Captain Orr: May I ask my right hon. Friend why not?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Representations have not been made because this is a long-standing part of the Anglo-Irish Trade Agreement, and in fact our exports in 1955 were £229,000 against imports from them of only £18,000.

Mr. Bottomley: Were these arrangements bound under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I think the Republic of Southern Ireland, or Eire as it is called, is not a member of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Mr. Chichester-Clark: asked the President of the Board of Trade what preferences are extended to United Kingdom imports by the Eireann Government under the recent official pronouncements; and to what goods they apply.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: For most goods 12½ per cent.; I am sending details to my hon. Friend.

Captain Orr: Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that these recent impositions of duty are in accordance with the Anglo-Eire Trade Agreement? Is there any intention of altering the United Kingdom tariffs on imports from Eire?

Mr. Thorneycroft: These recent moves were dictated by Eire's balance of pay-

ments position. As far as I can judge, she has made a real attempt to keep within the terms of our agreement with her.

Overseas Visitors (Wales)

Mr. Gower: asked the President of the Board of Trade what information he has of overseas visitors to Wales during the past 12 months; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I regret that there are no official statistics. I understand, however, that the British Travel & Holidays Association has estimated that the number of people from overseas who visited Wales in 1955 was of the order of 100,000.

Mr. Gower: In Wales, as in other parts of the United Kingdom, the tourist industry is potentially one of the best earners of foreign currency. Can my right hon. Friend therefore say what his Department can do to help the Welsh Tourist Board, financially or otherwise, and further, can he explain why the Secretary of State for Scotland was able to give very precise figures relating to the Scottish Tourist Board? Why is there not a similar interest taken in this matter in England and in Wales?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The British Travel and Holidays Association has given these estimates—I emphasise that they are no more than estimates—in the case of both Scotland and Wales. I would not vouch for their accuracy, but they are the best estimates which can be given.

Titanium Production

Mr. R. Edwards: asked the President of the Board of Trade what steps he is taking to encourage the production of titanium in this country in view of the fact that this material is in short supply and stocks are required to be imported from dollar sources.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: The hon. Member's statement that titanium is in short supply is not correct, United Kingdom output is more than sufficient to meet our needs, and I understand the producers are actively engaged on developing exports.

Stocks (Departmental Sales)

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will amend the present practice which prevents the annual dislosure of the financial loss incurred in selling stocks held by his Department.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Stocks of materials held by the Board of Trade are of two kinds—those remaining from trading operations formerly conducted by the Government and those held as a strategic reserve. Financial results in connection with the liquidation of trading operations are published annually by order of the House in the Trading Accounts and Balance Sheets of trading or commercial services conducted by Government Departments, together with the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General thereon. In the case of strategic stocks, purchases and sales are undertaken not for commercial, but for strategic, reasons and an annual statement in commercial terms of the financial results would therefore be inappropriate. The actual expenditure year by year from money voted for this purpose and the receipts taken into the Exchequer are, however, shown in the annual Appropriation Accounts.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that reply, but is he aware that it does not answer the Question? Will he admit or deny that he has lost vast sums of money in selling stocks held by his Department? Is he further aware that any Minister who sells 350,000 gallons of castor oil and calls it a normal turnover must be regarded as a bit of a menace?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I think the answer sets out clearly what has been the policy of all Governments in dealing with these stocks.

Mr. H. Wilson: Would the right hon. Gentleman not now be a little more forthcoming with the House about the strategic stocks? Does he recall that when asked about this a few weeks ago he gave a very vague and evasive answer? Since then he has announced very large sales from the strategic stockpile without, as far as I know, informing the House. Since we all recognise the importance of the strategic security considerations, will he, in turn, not recognise

that these are now passing when he is selling these large quantities? Will he make all the financial figures available?

Mr. Thorneycroft: If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the White Paper on Defence he will see our policy with regard to strategic stocks set out there. These sales are in pursuance of that general policy, but I am not prepared, any more than any other Government have been prepared, to disclose details of these sales.

Mr. Wilson: Since the right hon. Gentleman has issued statements to the Press in the last few days giving detailed figures of the quantities to be sold, running into very many millions of pounds, no security consideration can be involved. Will he not have another look at this to see whether he cannot give the House fuller information, after the transactions have been carried out, in order that the House may judge the commercial and financial results of his action?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am quite prepared to give the House all the information which is normally given to it as a matter of practice on the subject of strategic stocks, but I think the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that it is a matter upon which information cannot be given with quite the same freedom as on other topics.

Consumer Goods (Distributive Costs)

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade to what extent it is now the policy of Her Majesty's Government to conduct inquiries into the distributive costs of consumer goods generally, in view of the decision to order an inquiry into the distributive costs of coal.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: The Government do not intend to institute inquiries unless there is good reason for doing so in particular cases.

Miss Burton: Would the right hon. Gentleman agree that they seem to have rather a selective system? Is he aware that we on these benches have been pressing for some time for an inquiry into distributive costs on some foods? Will he say whether or not it will be the Government's policy to have such an inquiry?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The Government have no intention of instituting a roving inquiry over all distribution costs. If there is a special case in some particular instance, that would be considered, as in the case of coal or the Committee on Horticultural Marketing, which covers fruit and vegetables and which will include some investigation of distribution costs. We are not contemplating some general inquiry.

Motor Cars (Exports)

Mr. Moss: asked the President of the Board of Trade how exports of motor cars, as far as the figures are available in 1956, compare with the same period in 1955.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: The value of exports of new motor cars for the first two months of 1956 was £17·9 million compared with £22·7 million for the same period in 1955.

Mr. Moss: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether these doleful statistics are due to the colossal collapse of certain European markets? Are losses likely to follow in Commonwealth countries like Australia, where motor production is being developed on the basis of automatic processes?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Very shortly, I think two factors have combined to have that effect—partly competition from Western Germany in the European markets, as the hon. Member rightly says, and partly the Australian import restrictions.

Mr. V. Yates: Do I understand that the Minister is prepared to leave this situation of declining imports just to the industries? Would he not consider again hearing the views of the National Advisory Council for the Motor Manufacturing Industry? At least for once he might be of some assistance.

Mr. Thorneycroft: I shall be very happy to hear the views of the National Advisory Council for the Motor Manufacturing Industry or anybody in the motor car industry.

Mr. K. Thomson: Can my right hon. Friend form any judgment on what would be the effect on sales overseas of the products of the British motor industry if prices were, for example, 2½per cent. less, 5 per cent. less and 10 per cent. less? If not, will he do so?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I think the best judges on that are those people who are concerned in selling motor cars.

Mr. Jay: Will not even those very gloomy figures stir the President into some sort of action?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am not quite sure what sort of action the right hon. Member has in mind.

Mr. Moss: asked the President of the Board of Trade what percentage of the extra cars produced in 1955 was exported.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: The rate of production of cars in 1955 was 19 per cent. higher than in 1954. Exports of cars were 2 per cent. higher.

Mr. Moss: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that of the extra cars produced in 1955 about 5½ per cent. were exported? Does that not indicate the growing difficulties in the export field?

Mr. Thorneycroft: However one measures these percentages, it is true that the increase in production was substantially larger than the increase in exports.

Film Quota Defaults

Mr. G. Jeger: asked the President of the Board of Trade how many cinemas failed to achieve their quota of British films last year; and what action he proposes to take with defaulters.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I would refer the hon. Member to the Answer given to the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Swingler) on 20th March.

Mr. Jeger: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I have consulted that Answer, and it does not give any information about the small cinemas, to which my hon. Friend referred in his original Question'? Would the President take a special look at the smaller cinemas and smaller circuits, which appear to be the main defaulters? Will he investigate whether there are not special difficulties which ought to be overcome?

Mr. Thorneycroft: As the hon. Member knows, in assessing whether an offence has been committed under the Act the kind of circumstance and the degree of competition in a particular town are taken into account.

Mr. Hobson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that one of the worst defaulters in that regard is the Independent Television Authority? Will he consult the Postmaster-General with a view to putting an end to that practice?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Fortunately that does not fall within my field of responsibility.

Fairs, Stockholm and Posznan

Mr. Bottomley: asked the President of the Board of Trade what official backing is to be given to exhibitors of British goods at the St. Erik's Fair, Stockholm, Sweden, and the International Fair at Posznan, Poland.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: We are considering the possibility of organising a display of British scientific instruments at the St. Erik's Fair, Stockholm, in co-operation with the manufacturers concerned. At the International Fair at Posznan an official from the British Embassy at Warsaw will be present to give advice to British exhibitors with whom we are discussing how best to co-ordinate the design of their stands and the décor of the British section.

Mr. Bottomley: Whilst thanking the President for taking more energetic action in the matter of trade fairs—thanks to the pressure from this side of the House—may I ask if he thinks it wise to allow just one section of British industry to be supported by the Board of Trade at the St. Erik's Fair, rather than having a wider representation with full Government backing?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I appreciate the real interest of the right hon. Member in this particular fair. This is a difficult question, but it does depend rather on what sections of British industry are prepared to exhibit. We may have this offer—it is not firm yet—from the instrument manufacturers, and I think we should make use of it.

Mr. Bottomley: I do not want to put forward the claims of the promoters of St. Erik's Fair, but is the right hon. Gentleman aware that for many years British industry was organised to participate in that exhibition? Will the President give further consideration to their proposals?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am prepared to give consideration to any proposals for a good exhibit, but whether a particular industry chooses to go into it is a matter for that industry.

Mr. Drayson: Is not one of the difficulties about the Posznan Fair the fact that the currency is linked to the rouble, which gives a totally artificial idea of value and involves British manufacturers in considerable expense?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Yes, that is one of the difficulties in Posznan.

Italian Films (Import Licences)

Mr. Benn: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will refuse to grant import licences for the Italian films, "Maggia Verde" and "Principessa di Canaria," which contain scenes depicting cruelty to animals which were especially shot for this purpose.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: The import of cinematograph films is on open general licence from Italy. But in any case it is not the policy of Her Majesty's Government to use import restriction powers for censorship purposes. The Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act, 1937, however, makes it an offence to exhibit any film if the preparation of the scenes represented in it involves cruelty to animals.

Mr. Benn: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in one of these films a horse with a dummy rider on its back was driven over some cliffs and killed when it fell 200 feet on to rocks, and that the director of the film was later fined in the Italian courts for cruelty? Can some action be taken to prevent that being shown in this country?

Mr. Thorneycroft: It would not be for me, under my import licensing powers, to deal with that, but under the Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act action could be taken. Questions on the administration of that Act are matters for the Home Secretary.

Organisation for Trade Co-operation

Mr. Russell: asked the President of the Board of Trade what countries have formally notified their intention of becoming members of the proposed Organisation for Trade Co-operation.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: The Agreement setting up the Organisation has been signed by the United Kingdom, India, Belgium, Greece and Haiti. The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the Federal Republic of Germany, Chile and Turkey have signed "ad referendum," the Netherlands "subject to ratification" and the United States "subject to approval."

Mr. Russell: asked the President of the Board of Trade the estimated annual cost of maintaining the proposed Organisation for Trade Co-operation; and what will be the United Kingdom's share of this cost.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: The present annual cost of running the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is £160,000, of which our share is £23,200. There is no firm estimate of the comparable figures for the Organisation for Trade Co-operation, but it is expected that they will be of the same order, although possibly somewhat larger.

Imports from United States

Mr. Fisher: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in view of the adverse trade balance with the United States of America, he will institute a careful examination of our imports there-from, with a view to encouraging more imports from the British Empire and Commonwealth and less from the United States of America.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Much the greater part of our current imports from the United States consist of basic foodstuffs, raw materials and goods for industry. It is part of the policy of working towards a system of freer trade and payments, to which all Commonwealth Governments have subscribed, that traders and manufacturers should have as free access to all sources of supply as the balance of payments will permit.

Mr. Fisher: Is my right hon. Friend aware that our adverse trade balance with the United States of America last year was no less than £222 million in value, and that our imports from the United States increased, as compared with 1954, by nearly 50 per cent., whereas our exports to the United States increased by only about 20 per cent.? Does he regard that as satisfactory?

Mr. Thorneycroft: No, but our balance of payments problem is primarily due to excessive internal demand and excessive imports over exports, not only from the United States but from other countries.

Mr. Bottomley: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this did not happen under the Labour Government—indeed the reverse? May I ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will give any consideration to the proposition made from this side of the House in the debate on unemployment for considering the establishment of a Commonwealth development corporation?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I think it would be too provocative if I started saying what happened under the Labour Government.

Mr. Stokes: May I ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will once more examine the price at which we are selling whisky to the United States? The United States pays only 10 cents. a bottle more than it paid before the war, at 1 dollar and 10 cents., but everything from the United States costs three times as much as it did. The whole thing is a complete swindle and racket, and the President of the Board of Trade ought to look into it.

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am always happy to look into the price of whisky, but whisky sellers in this country have some incentive to get the best price they can.

Mr. Langford-Holt: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the basic foodstuffs which he mentioned are obtainable from other countries which are prepared, willing and anxious to trade with us?

Mr. Thorneycroft: My hon. Friend will recognise that Commonwealth Governments, including Canada and Australia, have subscribed to the general principle of allowing the freest access to world markets, subject to the balance of payments position.

Mr. Jay: Is it no longer the policy of the present Government, as it was of the previous Government, to substitute non-dollar for dollar imports wherever possible?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The policy of the previous Government was indicated by their signature to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, to which we have freely subscribed.

Imported Vegetables (Tariff)

Mr. Hunter: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in view of the shortage and high prices of vegetables, he will remove the tariff on vegetables imported from abroad.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: No, Sir. I understand that the present shortages are purely temporary and largely due to the recent severe weather. The tariff is not intended to be used as a short-term instrument to remedy temporary shortages or gluts due to natural causes.

Mr. Hunter: Arising out of that Answer, I wish to ask the President if he is aware that there is a serious shortage of fresh vegetables which many families cannot afford to buy at their present prices? Would not lifting the tariff enable families to buy fresh vegetables at prices they can afford? Why is the right hon. Gentleman so bitterly opposed to housewives paying reasonable prices?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am aware that both in this country and, more particularly perhaps, on the Continent of Europe, there has been difficulty in this matter, due to the severe weather, but the tariff instrument is not suitable for quick adjustments of supplies in the varying conditions of different months.

Commander Agnew: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the growers of vegetables in the Vale of Evesham and other districts have suffered very great losses in the last winter, due to the unusually severe weather conditions, and are relying on this tariff as a means of protection for the industry?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am aware that both consumers and producers have suffered from the severe weather and the shortage of vegetables.

Commonwealth Markets

Mr. Russell: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he is aware that Britain's share of the markets for imports into Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Colonial Territories as a whole has declined, while that of the United States of America has increased; and what steps he proposes to take in order to check this tendency.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: There has been such a tendency in some, but not all, of the markets to which my hon. Friend refers. I am hopeful that the measures recently taken by the Government will help to improve our competitive position in these and other overseas markets.

Mr. Russell: Does my right hon. Friend consider that the measures announced by the Government will do everything to remedy the situation? Would he not agree that if we were to encourage our importers to buy more produce from Empire countries, the Empire countries might be encouraged to buy more of our exports?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The steps recently taken by the Government are calculated to deal with inflation and make us more competitive in these markets.

Mr. H. Wilson: While I endorse the President's statement that the previous Government signed the General Agreement, which the present Government have maintained, does he not recall that under the previous Government's administration the proportion of Commonwealth trade considerably increased as regards both imports and exports? Will the right hon. Gentleman now say whether, within the General Agreement, it is or is not the policy of the Government to increase the proportion of our trade with the Commonwealth?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The right hon. Gentleman knows the terms of the General Agreement as well as I do.

Jute Manufactured Goods (Import)

Mr. Nabarro: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will now permit carpet manufacturers and others to import on private account, independent of the Jute Control, such jute manufactured goods, including yarn, from India and Pakistan and elsewhere, as are required for carpet manufacture and other manufactures in the United Kingdom.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: I would refer my hon. Friend to reply which I gave to him on 14th February.

Mr. Nabarro: That was a very unsatisfactory reply. Is it not the fact that if British carpet manufacturers and others


engaged in similar industries were allowed direct access to supplies from India and Pakistan of jute manufactured goods and yarn, they could, therefore, buy more cheaply and assist their own export prices for British manufactured carpets?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I am sensible that there might be advantages in altering this policy but there would be substantial disadvantages for Dundee and manufacturers here. I am not in a position to tell my hon. Friend that we propose to change our policy.

Captain Duncan: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the suggestion contained in the Question would bring ruin to Dundee and the surrounding area? Will he take what steps he can to stop my hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) from asking such tactless questions?

Mr. Thorneycroft: The reply to the second part of that supplementary question is "No, Sir."

Mr. Nabarro: Is it the correct interpretation of my hon. and gallant Friend's supplementary question that he is now in favour of nationalisation?

Mr. Speaker: We are getting very far from the Question.

Opencast Mining Machinery (Dollar Purchase)

Mr. Nabarro: asked the President of the Board of Trade what steps he takes to encourage the buying of British manufactured opencast coal-mining machinery from British specialist manufacturers before authorising to the National Coal Board dollar funds for purchasing equivalent United States machinery.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Before issuing an import licence for dollar machinery to any applicant, I satisfy myself that, on the facts available to me at the time, no British alternative offering roughly similar advantages is available.

Mr. Nabarro: Is my right hon. Friend not aware that 3 million dollars were recently authorised for two giant drag-line excavators from America, one of which is now lying with its back broken on the North-East Coast and the other is

out of commission, and that at the time these were ordered by the Coal Board and the dollars were authorised by his Department, British equivalents were available from Ransome and Rapier at Ipswich?

Mr. Thorneycroft: While no one would question the quality of any alternative that might have been available, there was a question of delivery date which had to be considered carefully and weighed against the amount of coal which could be got by getting these machines a little earlier.

Mr. Stokes: It is scarcely necessary for me to declare my interest. While I agree with the Minister that at the time these machines were ordered the question of delivery was of considerable importance, is he aware that the reason why the Coal Board was reduced to the ridiculous position of having to buy inferior machinery in America was that the Ministry of Fuel and Power could not make up its mind about how much opencast coal it wanted? Consequently, there was not sufficient time to negotiate for the site that the Coal Board wished to open and the Board had to buy this machinery in a hurry, at great cost, when much better machinery was available in this country, if only the Board had made up its mind in time.

Mr. Thorneycroft: When the case came to me I had to make a judgment on it according to the delivery position at the time, and I made my judgment to the best of my ability.

Australian Import Restrictions

Mr. Nabarro: asked the President of the Board of Trade what effect upon exports from the United Kingdom has been produced by recent Australian import restrictions, notably of British-manufactured carpets and motor cars; and, in view of short-time working in these industries, what representations he is making to the Australian authorities against further such import restrictions.

Mr. P. Thorneycroft: As Australian import licences are valid for twelve months, the effect of the restrictions imposed last October is not yet apparent. I would not think it right to try to stop the Australians from taking the steps they consider necessary to protect their overseas reserves, but I am glad to note that


the economic measures which the Australian Prime Minister announced last week do not include further import restrictions.

Mr. Nabarro: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that in the Kidderminster area one carpet worker in five is now on short time, partly due to pre-Budget anticipation regarding Purchase Tax, partly due to the credit squeeze and very largely due to these import restrictions? Will he, therefore, have special regard to the prospect of discussing this matter further with the Australian Government, both in respect of motor cars and carpets?

Mr. Thorneycroft: I will certainly bear my hon. Friend's remarks in mind, and I am glad to note that in their recent announcements the Australian Government went away from import restrictions and relied upon other methods of import control.

Mr. Stokes: Has the President of the Board of Trade really studied this matter? If he examines it, will he not find that the ridiculous position into which we have got the Australians arises entirely from the idiotic idea that a developing country can have a favourable balance of trade? So long as we go on with this ridiculous antediluvian idea which the Treasury has got sunk in its guts somewhere, we shall never get Australia developing to the extent that we require. Will the right hon. Gentleman look into that?

Mr. Thorneycroft: While I appreciate the vigour with which the right hon. Gentleman expresses his views, it is still necessary for the Australian Government, like other Governments, to live within their income.

Mr. Shinwell: Has the right hon. Gentleman observed that only a few minutes ago the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) told the House, in relation to short time and unemployment in the motor car industry in the Midlands, that there are 45,000 vacancies? Will the Minister take note of those vacancies when the hon. Member raises questions about short time in Kidderminster?

Mr. Baldwin: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the import restrictions imposed by the Australian Government are due

entirely to the trade gap? Does he not think that the way to encourage Australia is to buy more of our fruit there and less in the Argentine?

Mr. Thorneycroft: Australia is a very great market for British manufacturers, and continues to be so. I do not think we should start to develop some entirely new form of barter deal between this country and the Commonwealth.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Consumers' Expenditure (Food)

Mr. Dodds: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer by how much consumers' expenditure on food has increased in 1955 over 1951; how much is represented by an increase in the volume of consumption; how much is due to the increase in prices; and the prospects for 1956.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Henry Brooke): My right hon. Friend has as yet nothing to add to the reply he gave to the hon. Member on 30th January, when figures were given for the first nine months of 1955. Estimates of food expenditure in 1955, both in actual value and in volume, will be given in the Economic Survey to be published at the end of this month. It is not possible to express in any precise terms the prospects for 1956 since so much depends not only on imports of food but on the crops and harvests of home agriculture this year.

Mr. Dodds: As I can appreciate the deep humiliation of the Government in regard to their failure in this respect, I have not the heart to ask the right hon. Gentleman an unkind supplementary question.

Mr. Brooke: There is no humiliation on my part. The Answer to the hon. Member's previous question showed that consumption of food had risen by 7 per cent. in 1955.

Mr. Osborne: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that the agricultural workers who produce this food are entitled to a decent wage, and that the only way they can be paid a decent wage is for a proper price to be paid for the food which they produce?

National Trust (Transfers of Land)

Mr. Hayman: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what conditions are attached by the Treasury to its gifts of land to the National Trust in areas of outstanding scenic beauty to preserve their amenities.

Mr. H. Brooke: The only condition attached to such transfers is that the National Trust should not alienate any of the land without the prior consent of the Treasury.

Mr. Hayman: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that properties worth £380,000 have been transferred to the National Trust in the last six years and that the Trust has failed lamentably to maintain the amenities of some of these cliff lands in Cornwall? Will he look at the matter again to ensure that the Trust really matches up to its responsibilities?

Mr. Brooke: I could not accept allegations of that kind about the Trust across the Floor of the House.

£ Sterling (Purchasing Power)

Mr. H. Hynd: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer by how much the purchasing value of the £ sterling has fallen since October, 1951; and why.

Mr. H. Brooke: The purchasing power of the £, taken as 20s. in October, 1951, is estimated to have been 2s. 5d. less in January, 1956. The calculation is based on the Consumer Price Index between 1951 and 1954 and the Interim Index of Retail Prices since then. In reply to the second part of the Question, I would ask the hon. Member to read the White Paper on "The Economic Implications of Full Employment" which is being published today.

Mr. Hynd: Seeing that the Government's policy to mend the hole in the purse has evidently failed, and indeed the hole is getting bigger, do the Government now propose to change their policy?

Mr. Brooke: I would advise the hon. Member to read this very interesting and important White Paper which is being published and then consider whether he wishes to ask further questions.

Mr. F. M. Bennett: Has my right hon. Friend comparable figures showing the

fall in the value of the £ sterling between 1945 and 1951?

Mr. Brooke: Yes, Sir, I have. They have been given frequently before in the House, and they will be given again if asked for.

Mr. H. Wilson: Will the right hon. Gentleman say what new thoughts have suddenly struck the Government about this matter since the last Election in view of the fact that they are now producing a new White Paper? Will he say by how much the purchasing value of the £ sterling would have risen since October, 1951, if internal prices had followed the trend of world prices?

Mr. Brooke: The second part of the question would involve a calculation which I could not do in my head. May I say very seriously that I hope hon. and right hon. Members on both sides of the House will read the White Paper carefully. It is not a party document. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] It contains a great deal of information which will be of general non-party interest.

Mr. Jay: As I am sure that the Financial Secretary has read this important White Paper already, can he tell us whether this fall in the value of the £ will cease from now on?

Mr. Brooke: I hope that we shall have—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I do not think that arises.

Purchase Tax

Mr. Ellis Smith: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will exempt all British manufactured pottery seconds sold in the home market from Purchase Tax.

Mr. H. Brooke: No, Sir. Any scheme of that kind would break down.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Does the Financial Secretary not agree that it is the policy of the industry to maintain the high quality of its products so as to retain its enormous export trade? If the right hon. Gentleman is not prepared to do something on these lines, what will be the position of the industry? How is it to dispose of pottery seconds of high quality.

Mr. Brooke: I appreciate the thoughts underlying the hon. Member's Question, but if he will look into the practical implications he will see that it would be quite impossible to define seconds in such a way as to make sure that there was no unfair discrimination against goods which were not seconds but were produced to not quite so high a standard of quality.

Mr. Ellis Smith: In view of the fact that this is a special technical problem, is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to receive a representative delegation and, if so, receive it sympathetically?

Mr. Brooke: I will willingly have a talk with the hon. Member about the matter in the first instance.

Mr. Fell: Will my right hon. Friend take no such action while British people are prepared to accept second-best?

Mr. Marlowe: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much revenue he estimates would be lost to the Treasury if the hotels and restaurant industries were relieved of Purchase Tax on all the essential implements of their trade, such as carpets, curtains, linen, cutlery and kitchen equipment; and, in so far as this information is not readily available, if he will institute an inquiry.

Mr. H. Brooke: The information for which my hon. and learned Friend asks is not available and could only be obtained, if at all, by means of extensive special inquiries. I see no prospect that it would be possible to relieve particular users, such as hotels, of Purchase Tax on the goods they buy, and consequently I do not think that the cost of making such inquiries would be justified.

Mr. Marlowe: If my right hon. Friend does not know how much it will cost, how can he know whether we can afford it or not? Is he aware that the tourist trade is such an important dollar earner, that Purchase Tax forces up hotel prices and thereby keeps trade away, and that these are essential implements in the hotel trade? Will he do something about it?

Mr. Brooke: This is not a question of the Chancellor of the Exchequer affording it or otherwise, but of the principles of the Purchase Tax—and the Purchase Tax is based on charging tax irrespective of the particular buyer.

Mr. H. Wilson: While we all recognise the right hon. Gentleman's rather predatory ideas about Purchase Tax revenue, does he not recall that during the Chancellorship of Sir Stafford Cripps there was very special discrimination in favour of those hotels which had dollar visitors? Since it was done for them, and they are a special group, why does the right hon. Gentleman now say that it is not practicable or desirable?

Mr. Brooke: A scheme was operated for one year, 1950–51, and it was decided not to carry it on beyond that period.

Credit Facilities (Foreign Purchasers)

Mr. Cronin: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will take action to enable foreign purchasers of British goods to obtain export credit facilities in the United Kingdom at special rates.

Mr. H. Brooke: No, Sir. Credits for the purchase of British goods can only be made available at commercial rates of interest.

Mr. Cronin: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, as a result of his Department's policy of high interest rates, credit facilities are much cheaper in the financial institutions of our competitors and there is danger of our losing not only the export credit business but also the export trade which depends on that credit?

Mr. Brooke: British exporters can give foreign buyers on their own account what credit they think necessary. The hon. Member's suggestion is much more far-reaching, and I must inform him that it would not be possible.

Income Tax

Mr. A. Roberts: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will sympathetically consider relaxing the Income Tax regulations, so as to reduce the financial burden falling upon widowers having the responsibility of children.

Mr. H. Brooke: I have noted the hon. Member's suggestion.

Mr. Roberts: Will the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that the regulations should ensure adequate provision and that motherless children are adequately looked after?

Mr. Brooke: As I had to say in answer to a Question on Tuesday, what ever views I have on a matter like this, I ought not to express them when we are so near to Budget day.

Hon. Members: The old story.

Mr. A. Roberts: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his estimate of the additional cost to the Exchequer which would be incurred by granting housekeeper's allowance to widowers, if the requirement of residing on the premises were abandoned.

Mr. H. Brooke: I regret that the information on which to base such an estimate is not available.

Mr. Roberts: Will the Minister realise that it is not always possible for the housekeeper to live in the same house and that, apart from that, it is not always morally right either? This is a serious matter, to which I hope the Minister will give serious attention.

Mr. Brooke: One aspect of the matter was touched upon in the Report of the Royal Commission on the Taxation of Profits and Income, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has already pledged himself to examine the whole of the recommendations of that body.

Dame Irene Ward: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that spinsters are involved in this matter as well, and that we do not want consideration of housekeepers confined only to widowers? This is a very old question and a very old grievance—Income Tax relief in respect of housekeepers only for widows and widowers.

Mr. Brooke: I had noticed that the Question referred only to widowers, and I was not quite certain why widows were excluded.

Mr. Jay: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will increase the Income Tax child allowance in accordance with the second Report of the Royal Commission on the Taxation of Profits and Income.

Mr. H. Brooke: I must ask the right hon. Gentleman to await my right hon. Friend's Budget statement.

Mr. Jay: Is not the Chancellor at least giving some thoughts to these matters? Will he please take note that this should

have a very high priority in any tax reliefs which are possible?

Mr. Brooke: It will be within the recollection of the House that only about five minutes ago I said that my right hon. Friend was considering the whole of the recommendations of the Royal Commission.

Public Works Loan Board (Interest Rates)

Mr. Allaun: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what rate of interest is to be charged by the Public Works Loan Board on future housing loans.

Mr. H. Brooke: There is no separate rate for housing loans: the lending rates of the Board apply without distinction to all purposes for which local authorities are authorised to borrow. The terms of future loans will depend on the course of interest rates.

Mr. Allaun: But will the Minister advise the Board that the recent rise in the Bank Rate will not mean a further increase in the already excessive interest charges on housing loans? Will he drop the new procedure of forcing local authorities to attempt to borrow elsewhere at even higher rates?

Mr. Brooke: There is no distinction here between housing loans and other loans, but unquestionably the policy that was announced by my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, in October of last year must stay.

Government Departments (Staff Reductions)

Mr. Pargiter: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what instructions have been issued to the various Government Departments to give effect to the policy of Her Majesty's Government that the number of civil servants would be reduced by 10,000 to 15,000.

Mr. H. Brooke: Proposals to achieve this reduction are now being discussed with Departments.

Mr. Pargiter: Could I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether any date has been fixed for this reduction or whether it is still in the melting pot?

Mr. Brooke: There is no firm final date. We are pressing on rapidly.

National Lottery

Mr. E. Johnson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will take steps to organise a national lottery.

Mr. H. Brooke: No, Sir.

Mr. Johnson: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether he is aware that the marked change in public opinion during the last few years has led to a widespread demand for a scheme of this kind? Would not such a scheme divert a great deal of money into places where it could be used in the best interests of the nation?

Mr. Brooke: It is my duty to pay particular regard to the opinion of this House. Only two or three weeks ago the House endorsed, in general, the Report of the Royal Commission on Betting, Lotteries and Gaming, which stated that it was undesirable for the State to make itself responsible for the provision of gambling facilities.

Mr. Shinwell: Can the right hon. Gentleman explain why we should be so unctuous and righteous about this when we condone what is, in effect, a national lottery through the pools?

Mr. Brooke: I was not being unctuous, and certainly I was not charging the House with being unctuous. All I was saying was that a representative Royal Commission, which impressed the House by its recommendations, advised that this would be a mistake.

Mr. Johnson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that five years have passed since the Royal Commission issued its Report?

Farthing Coins

Mr. E. Johnson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he is aware that cases frequently occur of both shops and the British Transport Commission refusing to accept farthings in payment; and if he will therefore arrange for the withdrawal of these coins from circulation.

Mr. H. Brooke: Farthings are legal tender up to 1s. 0d. They are still required for certain transactions, and it would not be justifiable to withdraw them from circulation.

Mr. Johnson: May I ask my right hon. Friend if he would make it clear

that these coins have to be accepted if they are offered in payment; and what advice could he give to those who offer and have them refused?

Mr. Brooke: Those who offer them certainly have the law on their side. I do not know how much further I can carry the matter.

Films (Exports and Imports)

Mr. E. Johnson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer the value and earnings of British films exported to, and the cost of films imported from, the United States and Europe, respectively, during 1955.

Mr. H. Brooke: I regret that no figures are available for the earnings of British films. Precise figures of remittances for films in 1955 are not yet available, but they are unlikely to be very different from the 1954 figures of £9 million to the United States—excluding profits and payments which cannot be remitted under the Anglo-American Film greement—and about £½ million to Europe.

Mr. Johnson: Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that the agreement is working well? Is there nothing he can do to assist the film industry so that more British films are used both at home and abroad, thereby improving the position of our balance of payments?

Mr. Brooke: Perhaps my hon. Friend would be good enough to put both those questions to the President of the Board of Trade.

British Museum Reading Room

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make arrangements for the British Museum Reading Room to remain open each weekday until 10 p.m.; and what additional cost would be involved.

Mr. H. Brooke: The Trustees of the British Museum recognise that there is a demand for later opening of the Reading Room. But, having regard to available resources, they do not feel able to make this extension of their services to the public at the present time. It would cost an additional £35,000 a year and would require sixty-eight additional staff.

Mr. Robinson: Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the present closing hour of 5 p.m. makes it impossible for people in normal full-time employment to use the services of the British Museum Reading Room, and in view of the fact that the cost would be only £35,000, would he not use his influence to bring about this desirable change?

Mr. Brooke: I cannot accept phrases like "only £35,000" or "only sixty-eight additional staff." The hours of opening were extended until 7 p.m. as an experiment shortly before the last war. That was not a great success. To extend them to 10 p.m. would require this considerable number of extra people.

Acts of Parliament (Issue to Members)

Mr. G. R. Strauss: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will review the Treasury ruling that limits the free issue of Acts of Parliament to hon. Members on application to the Vote Office to those Acts passed in the present and immediately preceding Parliament.

Mr. Brooke: Acts of Parliament passed in the current and the two preceding Sessions are available free to hon. Members in the Vote Office. This practice is based on a statement made to the House on 18th February, 1924, and it appears to give a reasonable degree of satisfaction, for no hon. Member has asked a Question about it from that day to this.

Mr. Strauss: May I ask the Financial Secretary, now that the precedent has been broken, to agree that it is utterly ridiculous that an hon. Member dealing with the Transport (Disposal of Road Haulage Property) Bill, for example, which is only a Bill amending the 1953 Transport Act, could not get hold of that Act which it was essential to have in order to understand the Bill, without going to the Stationery Office and paying for it? Will the Financial Secretary look into the matter?

Mr. Brooke: I will certainly look into this matter. Of course there are numbers of copies of Statutes available on loan in different parts of this building. On this occasion I think that the excellent staff in the Vote Office, who serve us so well, were not aware that a particular

Statute might be required in connection with the work of a Committee upstairs, otherwise I am sure they would have tried to ensure that a copy could be available.

Mr. Strauss: But the right hon. Gentleman told us just now that the present rule is that such an Act is not available free to hon. Members because it is more than two years old. Further, is he aware that having copies of these Acts spread about the House is no use, when it is essential for an hon. Member to have a certain Act with him in a Committee room in order to discuss details of a Bill?

Mr. Brooke: What I said was that it was not a rule but a practice. We must have certain practices in these matters. We also have to administer them, like everything else in this House, with a reasonable degree of common sense and flexibility.

Mr. Gaitskell: But is not the Financial Secretary rather unfair in appearing to put upon the persons who serve the Vote Office the responsibility for this matter? Will he please look at this practice to see whether it cannot be amended to ensure that hon. Members have free all the facilities necessary for conducting their business in this House?

Mr. Brooke: I am extremely anxious that the arrangements should be such as to meet the convenience of hon. Members. We must have some accepted practices in this matter. The last thing I wish to do is to cast any blame on the Vote Office staff, but in that case had it become known that the Act was of importance in connection with a Committee upstairs, some arrangements might have been made in time.

Mr. Bellenger: But is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many hon. Members have limited their demands on the Vote Office for various public papers in the interests of economy? Therefore will he do his best, not only over Acts of Parliament, but also other papers, to ensure that we are not impeded in the discharge of our proper duties by parsimonious action on the part of the Treasury?

Mr. Brooke: If there is anything parsimonious about this action it dates from the Labour Government of 1924. As I have said repeatedly, I am anxious that


our arrangements should be such as to meet the reasonable requirements of all hon. and right hon. Members.

Mr. Gaitskell: To clear up this matter, I ask whether we may take it that the Financial Secretary will consider the question, and will make a statement on it after Easter?

Mr. Brooke: I will certainly examine whether there is anything further that can be done. If I may say so, this is the first complaint of the kind for thirty-two years, so I do not think that anything can be seriously wrong.

Mr. Shinwell: As I am the only member of the Labour Government of 1924 now in this House, will the right hon. Gentleman understand that I repudiate any responsibility?

Economic Situation

Dr. Broughton: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) the estimated cost of the proposed national campaign to bring home the facts of the economic situation to the whole community;
(2) what form the national campaign to bring home the facts of the economic situation to the whole community will take.

Mr. H. Brooke: Until the Government have completed the round of discussions which they are having with representatives of all sides of industry, it is too early to say what form subsequent action will take.

Dr. Broughton: Is it not disgraceful that public money should now have to be expended for this purpose? Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that if this campaign is to serve any useful purpose, the Government must contradict the misleading propaganda of the Tory Party that was disseminated in the General Election last year?

Mr. Brooke: No, Sir. I cannot accept one word of that suggestion.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Gaitskell: May I ask the Lord Privy Seal whether he will state the business for next week?

The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. R. A. Butler): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY, 26TH MARCH—A debate will take place on Malta on a Motion to take note of the Report of the Round Table Conference.
Committee and remaining stages of the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation Bill.
TUESDAY, 27TH MARCH—Second Reading of the Underground Works (London) Bill.
Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution.
Report and Third Reading of the Sugar Bill.
Consideration of the Double Taxation Relief Order relating to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
WEDNESDAY, 28TH MARCH—Second Reading of the Slum Clearance (Compensation) Bill.
Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution.
Report and Third Reading of the Pensions (Increase) Bill.
THURSDAY, 29TH MARCH—It's is proposed to meet at 11 a.m. and take Questions until 12 noon.
Adjournment for the Easter Recess until Tuesday, 10th April.

Mr. Gaitskell: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, for the convenience of hon. Members, he can say when the various Blue Books and White Papers which precede the Budget will be published, in particular the Economic Survey, the White Paper on National Income and Expenditure and the White Paper on the Balance of Payments?

Mr. Butler: I think they will follow respectable precedents, and in the case of the Economic Survey recent respectable precedents, and be in good time for consideration. I understand that the Economic Survey will be published before the end of March. I will bring to the


attention of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer the question asked by the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Bellenger: Has the right hon. Gentleman noticed that in this morning's Manchester Guardian it was stated definitely that the Malta debate would take place on Monday? Would he therefore look into the department presided over by the Patronage Secretary and consider whether there has been any undue leakage of business to the Press?

Mr. Butler: I know what wonderful sources of prophecy there are in the brightest of our newspapers. All I can say is that I am well satisfied with the secrecy of the arrangements presided over by my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary.

Mr. Teeling: May I ask a question about the debate on Malta? Is my right hon. Friend aware of the very unhappy impression which it will give to many religiously minded people in Malta that the debate will be held during Holy Week which for them, and for many people in this country, is a very sacred week, in which we try not to quarrel about most religious matters? Would he be good enough to let the House know the reasons for which we are having the debate during that week so as to dispel, if possible, this unhappy impression, which will undoubtedly be found in Malta?

Mr. Butler: The statement made by my hon. Friend was in the mind of the Government—namely, we considered whether it was right to hold the debate next week. There was nothing in our information from Malta or from the inquiries we made here which caused us to change the idea of holding a debate, although we had fully in mind the considerations which are in my hon. Friend's mind. Furthermore, we had to take into consideration the answer given by my predecessor as Lord Privy Seal, when he used these words:
…no action will be taken until the House has had the opportunity of debating the Report after Christmas, thus enabling the Government to take careful account of the views of hon. Members on this important constitutional question."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th December, 1955; Vol. 547, c. 1404.]
We therefore thought it was important to give the House that opportunity and not

to delay any longer. After carefully weighing all the elements in the problem, we came to the conclusion that it would not be offensive to hold this debate next week and to let hon. Members state their views.

Mr. Paget: Could the right hon. Gentleman tell us when the Committee stage of the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill will take place?

Mr. Butler: I gave a reply to the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman), but the last time I announced business I could give no undertaking. I said that it would be treated in the same way as any other Bills under consideration. It will have to take place after Easter.

Mr. Paget: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether it will be the first Tuesday after Easter? I ask him that question because the Ministries of Justice of countries with experience of this matter are sending over some people who might answer questions, and we wanted to know that it would not be on the first Tuesday after the Recess.

Mr. Butler: I am not able to announce the business for the week after we return until just before the House rises. Naturally, there will have to be the usual interchange through the usual channels before the business is finally settled for the week after we return. I think it is most unlikely to be the first Tuesday, but I will bear in mind what the hon. and learned Gentleman says.

Mr. Black: In view of the great importance of the Malta question, and particularly the fact that a very large number of hon. Members will wish to take part in the debate, will not my right hon. Friend consider giving two days and not one for the purposes of the debate?

Mr. Butler: I know that there will be a great many hon. Members who wish to speak in the debate, but I am afraid that we simply have not the time to give two days for consideration of the Report of the Round Table Conference. I therefore hope that hon. Members, both on the Ministerial side and on the Front Bench opposite, as well as private Members on all sides, will be as brief as possible so that as many hon. Members as possible can take part in the debate.

Mr. H. Wilson: When the right hon. Gentleman referred to the remarkable gifts of prophecy which are vouchsafed to the national Press, is he aware that the dates of the publication of the economic White Papers, if not known to himself and the Chancellor, appear to be known to Sir Oscar Hobson, and were published in this morning's News Chronicle? Will he say whether those dates are correct? Further, will he impress on the Chancellor the desirability of printing as many of those White Papers before the Easter Recess as possible, so that they can be fully studied by hon. Members before the Budget debate?

Mr. Butler: Yes, Sir. What Sir Oscar Hobson says is quite often right. After consultation with my right hon. Friend, I will see that these White Papers are available as usual, so that the Budget debate, which is to take place, as is known, in the week of 17th April, can be conducted with a full knowledge of the contents of those White Papers.

Mr. Pickthorn: Since my right hon. Friend has referred to his predecessor, will he correct or confirm my recollection—I do not tie myself to it, for I have not checked it properly—that it was intended, before any Governmental decision on Malta was reached, that there should be a debate in the House to enable individual hon. Members to state their opinions, and to make up their minds, without committing themselves in any way? Does he think, in view of that, that the notice now given, or the amount of time now set aside for what in any case must involve more and greater constitutional difficulties than anything which has been before the House for many years, is sufficient?

Mr. Butler: I think that that lends force to the Government's decision to have the debate before Easter so that, according to my predecessor's words, they may be able to
take careful account of the views of hon. Members.
I cannot undertake that more time will be given, because we have a great deal of business to do and there is no time available to give.

Mr. Stokes: The right hon. Gentleman will remember that last week, in addition to asking about the Hunter crash, on which there has since been a report, I

also asked whether the Secretary of State for Air would make a report on the tragic crash at Malta, in which 35 people lost their lives. Will there be a report before Easter?

Mr. Butler: I spoke to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Air after the right hon. Gentleman had intervened. As he knows, on one subject he has heard something. On the other, I hope he will hear something, too.

Mr. Beresford Craddock: Will my right hon. Friend be good enough to consider suspending the rule for one hour on Monday?

Hon. Members: For more than one hour.

Mr. Butler: This will have to be discussed through the usual channels, but if it is the wish that a longer time should be given to this debate the Government will give consideration to it.

Mr. S. Silverman: Referring again to the further progress with the Death Penalty (Abolition) Bill, and, in particular, to his remarks that there would have to be consultations between the usual channels, would the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that this is not a matter it which either Front Bench is officially engaged? In the discussions which take place through the usual channels would it be any great inconvenience to the Government if I were given some notice of what was in their minds?

Mr. Butler: In this case there are channels, but they are somewhat unusual.

Mr. Bottomley: In view of the fact that the Government could not get a quorum once in Standing Committee to consider the Sugar Bill, which has been delayed for so long, could it be put off to allow a second day to be given to the debate on Malta?

Mr. Butler: No, Sir. The situation is not as simple as the right hon. Gentleman suggests. The Government propose to go ahead with the Sugar Bill and to get the Report and Third Reading.

Dame Irene Ward: Is my right hon. Friend aware that I would much prefer the introduction of legislation to deal with widows to a debate on the Underground Works (London) Bill? Why should this Bill be allowed to take precedence over


the very pressing legislation for which widows have waited a very long time after the National Insurance Advisory Committee has reported?

Mr. Butler: It is very important, in answering the hon. Lady, that we should not mix our metaphors. This is a hybrid Bill. It will have to go to a Select Committee after the Second Reading, if objections are presented, and it is, therefore, desirable to make progress with it as soon as possible. It is for that reason, and not because of the human considerations put forward by the hon. Lady, that we are giving it precedence.

Mr. Fell: Will my right hon. Friend reconsider the point put to him by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Teeling)? Next week is a very important week not only to Malta, but to this country, both being Christian countries. Next Monday is the first day of Holy Week. Although my right hon. Friend said that he had had no representations from Malta, it may be that it was not known in Malta that there might arise in this House questions concerning religious topics. I therefore ask my right hon. Friend to reconsider his decision and to postpone the debate, and possibly give an extra day later.

Mr. Butler: It was not a case of receiving representations from Malta; but inquiries made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Government indicate that it would not violate anyone's conscience if consideration of this subject, in response to the promise that there would be a debate after Christmas, were now to be implemented before the Easter Recess. This debate falls, as it happens, on Monday, 26th March, and I sincerely believe that it will be possible to have that debate and to take note of the Report of the Round Table Conference without waiting further.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: During the course of the Malta debate, will there be a statement of the Government's own view on the constitutional issues involved?

Mr. Butler: I think it can be expected that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will state the Government's view

on the Report of the Round Table Conference; otherwise, there would be no reality in his taking part in the debate.

Mr. Ellis Smith: I want to raise two real points of order. I want to ask for the protection of Mr. Speaker and to ask hon. Members in all parts of the House to assist in the protection of Mr. Speaker. My first point of order is based on a long Parliamentary understanding, custom and practice. Having had the privilege of knowing three Speakers, I claim to know just a little about it. One of the most important constitutional rights of hon. Members is that grievances should be redressed, or at least ventilated in the House, before we vote Supply. Mr. Speaker created a very important constitutional precedent about that—[An HON. MEMBER: "When?"]—and we ask for that to be reinforced today. If hon. Gentlemen opposite are not sufficiently acquainted with Parliamentary history, may I say that I am referring to the time when Mr. Speaker defended five Members.
I understand that before the Consolidated Fund Bill receives its Second Reading—and I remember that this was particularly so before the war—hon. Members have a right, within limits, to raise any point on it they like. I am in a strong position in raising this question today, because I was not involved in what happened the other night. Let me make it clear that I am casting no reflection on the Chair, but many of my hon. Friends sat in the Chamber all day on Tuesday and until 1.25 a.m. on Wednesday, when the Government Chief Whip moved the Adjournment.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member means the Closure.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Yes, Sir. Thank you very much. Many of my hon. Friends, including those who speak for large industrial areas, had no opportunity of speaking and I wonder, Mr. Speaker, whether you would be good enough to rule on that.
I do not necessarily want a reply to my second point of order today. I want Mr. Speaker to consider it during the Recess. There are hon. Members in all parts of the House, including those of us whose records can, if necessary, be examined, who are constantly being subjected to Privy Councillors not only


enjoying their privileges and rights, but taking advantage of them to an unfair extent.

Mr. Nabarro: I am looking at the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell).

Mr. Ellis Smith: In reply to that nasty interjection, may I say that my right hon. Friend has a record which is so worthy that it will bear nasty remarks of that character.
What I want to ask you, Mr. Speaker, is whether, during the Recess, you will consider this matter in order that all hon. Members may be able to enjoy their Parliamentary rights?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) has raised two points which he called points of order. I doubt whether they are. The first was about the Closure which was moved, and which I accepted, on the Consolidated Fund Bill in the early hours of Wednesday morning. In the matter of the Closure I am bound, by the Standing Order of the House, to accept the Motion and to put the Question forthwith, unless the Chair is of the opinion that the Motion is an abuse of the rules of the House, or an infringement of the rights of the minority.
It is quite clear that I would not have accepted the Motion had I, in my discretion, come to that conclusion. The hon. Member was kind enough to say that he was not challenging my discretion and, of course, he could not do so, as he knows quite well, upon a point of order. He would have to put down a Motion. So there is no point of order in that. In so far as it is a question of the hon. Member making a criticism of the Government for moving the Closure, that is another matter. It is a matter for debate and not one involving a point of order.
The second matter of which the hon. Member complained was the undue participation of right hon. Gentlemen in our affairs. I have already expressed myself on that matter. It is an old custom of the House that they should be given priority, but, during the Recess, I will certainly consider what the hon. Member says, as he has asked me to do. I feel that this is a matter not so much for me, but for the good sense of the hon. Gentlemen and right hon. Gentlemen involved.
I myself consider that the old custom is a valuable background which should not lightly be cast aside. It is founded upon the fact that right hon. Gentlemen who have borne responsibility have generally something to contribute to the House to which the House should be glad to listen. That is the general rule. But, as the hon. Member has been kind enough to ask me to ponder the subject during the Recess, I hope I shall, among other subjects, think about that, too.

Mr. Nabarro: I understand you to rule, Sir, that the second point raised by the hon. Member, relating to interventions by Privy Councillors, was a point of order. If so, may I ask whether the privileges enjoyed by Privy Councillors on the Opposition side of the House extend to Question Time? In support of that, I would draw your attention to what occurred on Question No. 39 today, when a number of my hon. Friends on this side of the House rose to ask supplementary questions and five Opposition Privy Councillors in succession were called, thereby monopolising the time and preventing any expression of view from this side. Finally, Sir, might I say that I raised this matter with you a month ago and asked for personal protection?

Mr. Speaker: Question No. 39 was asked by the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. G. R. Strauss), and he was quite entitled to follow up with a supplementary. In that position he was like everybody else. The custom does apply to Questions just as it does to speeches.
This is not really a point of order, but rather a matter of the practice of the House and its custom. There is nothing in the Standing Orders about it; it is a question for the House, and the House has its own way of dealing with these things. I do not think that the hon. Member for Kidderminster need complain that his voice is silent in this House.

Mr. Belleager: You indicated, Sir, that the first point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) was not strictly a point of order. Since I understand that my hon. Friend broke into what was a period of questions on business, would you allow me to put this question to the Prime Minister?
Would the Prime Minister agree that the use of the Closure on the Consolidated Fund Bill should be used only very rarely? My hon. Friend has stated quite correctly that this Bill affords an opportunity to hon. Members who may think their views are very important, although the House may not, to raise points at any time of the day or night while the House is sitting. That is their constitutional right. Will the right hon. Gentleman therefore take steps to ensure that the Chief Whip uses that power only very, very occasionally indeed?

The Prime Minister: It may be absolutely proper for the right hon. Gentleman to ask me that question without notice, but I am quite sure it would not be proper for me to answer it without notice.

COUNCIL OF EUROPE (UNITED KINGDOM DELEGATION)

The Prime Minister (Sir Anthony Eden): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I wish to make a statement about the Council of Europe.
The Consultative Assembly will meet at Strasbourg on 16th April, and I have appointed eighteen delegates from the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The distribution of the appointments between the parties is the same as in the previous delegation, that is, nine Members of the Conservative Party, eight Members of the Labour Party and a representative of the Liberal Party. I have also appointed a number of substitute delegates.
The appointments of the Labour and Liberal representatives and substitutes have, of course, been made on the basis of nominations by the Leaders of those parties. I will circulate the names in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
The same delegation will represent the United Kingdom Parliament at the Western European Union Assembly, which is also expected to meet at Strasbourg on 23rd April.

Mr. Snow: Is the Prime Minister aware that a number of hon. Members think

that some of these rather expensive dining clubs should be wound up?

Mr. Speaker: I do not think that that arises now.

Following are the names:

Representatives from the Government benches—

The right hon. Members for Moss Side (Dame Florence Horsbrugh) and Renfrew, West (Mr. Maclay).

The hon. Members for Preston, North (Mr. J. Amery), Belfast, South (Sir D. Campbell), Henley (Mr. Hay), Scotstoun (Sir J. Hutchison), Farnham (Mr. Nicholson), and Bebington (Mr. Oakshott), and Lord Chesham.

From the Labour Party—

The Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell), the right hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards).

The hon. Members for Goole (Mr. G. Jeger), Stechford (Mr. Roy Jenkins), Hartlepools (Mr. D. Jones), Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. Popplewell), Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey), and the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget).

From the Liberal Party—

Lord Layton.

The following substitutes have been appointed to act for the delegates when they are absent from Strasbourg:

From the Government benches—

The hon. Members for Antrim, South (Mr. Knox Cunningham) and Gravesend (Mr. Kirk), the hon. and gallant Member for Wells (Lieut.-Commander Maydon), the hon. Members for Bournemouth, East and Christchurch (Mr. N. Nicolson), and Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden), and Viscount Stonehaven.

From the Labour Party—

The hon. Members for Batley and Morley (Dr. Broughton), East Ham, North (Mr. Daines), Motherwell (Mr. Lawson), and Stoke-on-Trent, North (Mrs. Slater).

From the Liberal Party—

The hon. Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Holt).

Orders of the Day — TEACHERS (SUPERANNUATION) [MONEY] (No. 2)

Resolution reported,
That for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend the Teachers (Superannuation) Acts, 1918 to 1946, and so much of the Education (Scotland) Acts, 1939 to 1953, as relates to superannuation and to the employment of teachers over the age of sixty-five years, and for purposes connected therewith, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any sums authorised or required to be so paid by virtue of any provisions of the said Act of the present Session (including any increase attributable thereto in the sums payable out of such moneys under any other enactment) being provisions

(a) for the restoration to teachers as from the commencement of the said Act of annual superannuation allowances previously terminated by reason of the re-employment of those teachers in contributory service or in employment which would apart from their age be contributory service, and the continued payment of annual superannuation allowances to teachers who, having been granted such allowances, are at that date or thereafter become re-employed as aforesaid;
(b) for the repayment to teachers who, having been granted a superannuation allowance or gratuity, are at any time reemployed in contributory service, but do not qualify by virtue of their re-employment for any further allowance or gratuity, of contributions paid by them in respect of any period of re-employment after the commencement of the said Act;
(c) amending the law as to the intervals at which instalments of annuities and annual allowances may be paid;
(d) enabling the Minister to treat as contributory service for the purpose of calculating the amounts of allowances or gratuities of teachers employed in contributory service previous employment providing experience of value to them as teachers, being employment in respect of which contributions of such amount as the Minister may prescribe are paid by the teachers.

Resolution agreed to.

Orders of the Day — TEACHERS (SUPERANNUATION) BILL

Order read for consideration, as amended (in Standing Committee D and in the Scottish Standing Committee).

Bill re-committed to a Committee of the whole House in respect of the Amendments to Clause 8, page 7, lines 30, 31 and 47, and page 8, lines 1 and 6; Clause 10, page 9, line 43; Clause 11, page 10, lines 18, 23 and 36; Clause 15, page 13, line 26; Clause 16, page 14, line 29; and the new Clauses (Intervals of payments of annuities and allowances), (Reemployment of teachers in contributory service), (Return of contributions) and (Further provisions as to service of value to teachers), standing on the Notice Paper in the name of Sir David Eccles; and in respect of the Amendments to Clause 29, page 24, lines 22 and 39, and page 25, line 12; and Clause 30, page 25, line 31, standing on the Notice Paper in the name of Mr. Henderson Stewart.—(Sir D. Eccles.)

Bill immediately considered in Committee.

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

Orders of the Day — Clause 8.—(PROVISION FOR WIDOWS', CHILDREN'S AND DEPENDANTS' PENSIONS.)

3.59 p.m.

The Minister of Education (Sir David Eccles): I beg to move, in page 7, line 30, after "widows," to insert "widowers."

The Chairman: I think it would be convenient for the Committee if this Amendment were taken together with the following four Amendments standing in the name of the right hon. Gentleman, and with the Amendment in Clause 30 standing in the name of the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. They all relate to the same subject.

Sir D. Eccles: I think that will be for the convenience of the Committee, Sir Charles. These five Amendments to Clause 8 and the Scottish Amendment to Clause 30 widen the scope of the regulations to be made governing the reallocation of the lump sum benefits in favour of widows and dependants. That is why they have to be recommitted.
The five Amendments to Clause 8 were put down to meet points made during the Committee stage by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Newcastle, Central (Mr. Short). With both of their criticisms, the Government agree. They said, first, that the right of a married woman to elect to bring her family into


the scheme should not be limited to cases where the husband is wholly or mainly dependent upon her; and secondly, that the wording of Clause 8 (3, b) was obscure.
The best way to deal with obscure drafting in the Bill is to leave it out. That I propose to do, and also to add certain words earlier in the Clause which have the effect, when we come to make the regulations for the widows' and orphans' scheme of leaving open for discussion whether or not married women should be treated on exactly the same footing as married men. That would be novel, and, of course, would have to be discussed with the representatives of the local authorities and of the teachers.
Were the Committee unwilling to accept the Amendments, as the Bill stands there would be a difference between married women and married men such as, I think, is embodied in other pension schemes. Men entering the profession, if they are married, or when they get married, will be required under the rules to be drawn up, to join the new scheme for the reallocation of their lump sum benefit. It is necessary to have them all in so that the Account may carry both good and bad risks and, therefore, be financially in a position to pay out claims which are made earlier than the average.
As the Bill stands at present, married women, new entrants as well as those already in posts, have the right to elect whether or not to join the scheme. But, of course, if one gives such a right, a high proportion of the bad risks will, naturally, fall upon the Account. That is why there is placed upon the married woman who may have this choice the limitation in respect of her husband. It is prescribed in the Bill that she can choose to join only where the husband is wholly or mainly dependent upon her. That is in order that the Account should not have to carry a very high proportion of the bad risks.
I have sympathy with the argument which was, I think, put forward by the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central. He said that nowadays it is an anachronism to treat married women and married men in these different ways. I suppose that there was a time when cases where the husband was wholly or mainly

dependent on the wife were comparatively rare. Times have changed, and now it is hard to tell which spouse really keeps the family together. That is a fact, but I cannot say whether the teachers and the local authorities will wish to treat married women in the same way as married men. If they do, it means that all the married women must come into the Account in the same way as Clause 8 now provides that all married men must come in.
I am grateful to hon. Gentlemen opposite for giving me a lead in putting down these Amendments. They make the Clause wider and more interesting, and it remains to be seen exactly how those concerned will wish to define the status of married women as compared with married men when we come to draw up a scheme.

Mr. Michael Stewart: We shall all agree that these Amendments would make the Clause more satisfactory in scope and more clear in wording than when it first appeared in the Bill. If I understand aright, the Amendments would do two things; remove the restriction about the husband having to be wholly or mainly dependent—which is a change of substance—and then, compensating for that financially, as it were, they would require all new women entrants as well as men to come into the scheme.

Sir D. Eccles: I know that this is a difficult point. As the Clause will be framed if the Amendments are accepted, it will be open to discussion whether the teachers wish all married women to be brought in. If they prefer the regulations to go back to the old pattern, the married women will be left with the choice, but with the limitation about their husbands being wholly or mainly dependent on them. We shall have to see what they decide.

Mr. Stewart: If I follow the right hon. Gentleman, it may result after discussion that, in fact, the rules would be of the kind envisaged in the first draft of this Clause. The Amendments make it possible either to have rules which were the only rules possible under the first draft, or other rules.
I raise that point because the wording of subsection (2) as it would appear after amendment would be:
Rules made under this section, so far as they provide for pensions for widows, widowers


and children, may apply, irrespective of election, to male or female teachers who enter into contributory service after the date specified in the rules….
We have often been told that the word "may," in an Act of Parliament, means "shall." From what the right hon. Gentleman has said, I presume that this is one of those occasions where "may" does not mean "shall," but means what it says.
It is a point which has always mystified us, but at any rate we may, I think, take it from the right hon. Gentleman that "may" in this context does not mean "shall," and that it definitely means that this is one of the alternatives which are open; and that with all the various possibilities for rules the ones that are finally adopted will be adopted after consultation by the right hon. Gentleman with the persons referred to in the Clause. Presumably, under Clause 21 of the Bill, the rules finally approved would be subject to discussion by means of a Prayer in this House. I have no doubt that we shall all await with interest to sec what rules the Minister is able to prepare under this Clause.
These Amendments widen the scope of the Clause and they also make an alteration, not in substance but in form, which makes it clear that a teacher who is a widow may take advantage of these provisions to provide for her children. That was the point which was somewhat obscure in the original drafting of the Clause. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Short) will be gratified by what has been done to meet the very sensible point which he raised in our Committee discussions, and I think that we all welcome these Amendments.

Miss Alice Bacon: I apologise if I am asking the Minister for a further explanation of something which he has already made clear during the discussions in the Committee, but through no fault of mine I was unable to attend most of the sittings of the Committee, and there is one matter about which I am not clear. I take it that in addition to married people, both men and women, this scheme will be open to unmarried men and unmarried women. The majority of teachers are unmarried women and I am wondering

whether they will be able to join in order to provide for their dependants.

Sir D. Eccles: Under Clause 9, there is a separate scheme whereby teachers can appoint their dependants. It may be that a woman teacher has a sister whom she would wish to appoint. That matter is dealt with under the next Clause.

Mr. George Chetwynd: Can the Minister tell the Committee what he has in mind about discussions about this matter that he must hold with all the organisations concerned? Does the right hon. Gentleman propose to impose some time limit by which he will require an answer to this problem? Unless he obtains a majority opinion in favour of what it is proposed to do by these Amendments, will he, in the rules, revert to the original scheme as provided by Clause 8? Am I right in assuming that?

Sir D. Eccles: I think it would be best to see how the discussions develop. I must admit that I have no idea how teachers will respond to this matter. I rather think that they will adopt the more modern method.

Mr. Edward Short: I thank the Minister for including these Amendments, which I think, are very good ones and meet the point which we raised in Standing Committee. I take it that the effect of the Amendments will be to widen the scope of the regulations which the Minister may make under the Clause. They will not necessarily affect the scheme, when it comes out at the end of the sausage machine, but they will enable the Minister, the local authorities and the teachers to widen the scope of the scheme. Previously, women could elect only if their husbands were dependent upon them, but the Amendments will enable all married women teachers to elect in favour of their husbands.
Perhaps he most interesting point which the three parties will have to consider is the question whether or not women new entrants to the profession must elect. Obviously, men new entrants will have to elect, but whether or not it will be possible to make women new entrants do so is another matter. That is one of of the knotty problems which the parties must face.
I believe that this is a step in the right direction. With equal pay and the general equality which women have won now, this is the only way to deal with the matter. As the Minister said, in most homes nowadays the spouses are on an equal footing; it is difficult to say who is dependent upon whom. I think that we are very wise to alter the Clause so that teachers, local authorities and the Minister can put women teachers upon an absolutely equal footing with their men colleagues.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendments made: In page 7, line 31, leave out "male."

In line 47, after "widows," insert "widowers."

In page 8, line 1, after "male," insert "or female."

In line 6, leave out subsection (3).—[Sir D. Eccles.]

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Orders of the Day — Clause 10.—{INCREASED ANNUAL ALLOW ANCE IN EXCHANGE FOR SURRENDER OF ADDITIONAL ALLOWANCE.)

Amendment made: In page 9, line 43, at end insert:
and the increase to be made in the annual allowance of a teacher who has made such an election shall apply to any subsequent annual allowance which may be granted to him by virtue of the said section eleven."—[Mr. Vosper.]

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Orders of the Day — Clause 11.—(ADDITIONAL ALLOWANCES AND SHORT SERVICE GRATUITIES IN RESPECT OF SUCCESSIVE PERIODS OF SERVICE.)

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Dennis Vosper): I beg to move, in page 10, line 18, at the end to insert:
(a) any subsequent annual allowance shall be in substitution for any annual allowance previously granted to the teacher, and the amount of any such subsequent allowance, exclusive of any increase by virtue of any election under Section ten of this Act, shall be not less than the amount of the allowance previously granted, exclusive of any such increase.

The Chairman: I think it would be convenient if, with this Amendment, we also discussed the Amendments, in page

10, line 23, to leave out paragraph (b) and insert:
(b) no subsequent annual allowance or additional allowance shall be granted unless the teacher has been employed in contributory service for a period of, or for periods amounting in the aggregate to, at least twelve months since the last previous grant of such an allowance.
and in line 36, at the end insert:
(3) For the purposes of paragraph (b) of the proviso to subsection (1) of this section so far as it relates to annual allowances, any employment before the commencement of this Act which would have been contributory service if Section six of this Act had been in force shall be treated as contributory service.
(4) Section seven of the Teachers (Superannuation) Act, 1945 (which provides that a subsequent annual allowance shall be of an amount not less than that of an annual allowance previously granted), is hereby repealed.

Mr. Vosper: Yes, Sir Charles.
The first and third of the Amendments arise as a result of the proposed New Clause dealing with the re-employment of teachers. As it now becomes possible for a re-employed teacher to earn part or the whole of his pension it is necessary to include a reference to pensions in this Clause. That is covered by the first of these three Amendments. The first Amendment also re-enacts a provision in the 1945 Act which ensures that a reemployed teacher cannot draw a smaller pension than that which he originally drew.
The second Amendment is purely verbal, putting the existing paragraph (b) in better words; and the third Amendment safeguards the rights of certain teachers over the age of 65 who are reemployed. This point was covered by an earlier enactment but, for easier understanding, it was put into this Clause.

Mr. George Thomas: I merely want to make sure that I heard the Parliamentary Secretary correctly. Did he say that no one would have a lower pension because he went back to work? If that guarantee can be given I shall be perfectly satisfied.

Mr. Vosper: That is no new provision; it was originally contained in Section 7 of the 1945 Act, which is being repealed, and reintroduced in this Clause.

4.15 p.m.

Mr. M. Stewart: I think that the Committee will agree that these are somewhat complicated Amendments. I was hoping


that the Parliamentary Secretary or his right hon. Friend would be willing to read to us the Clause as it will stand after all these Amendments are made. This is a case where we want to see the picture as a whole. Perhaps the hon. Member would be willing to do as I ask.
Secondly, I wonder if he can refresh our memories upon one point? By the third of these Amendments, Section 7 of the 1945 Act is repealed, but by the first of the Amendments the substance of that Section is re-enacted. This may be a point which I should have remembered from the Committee stage, but it appears to have escaped my memory, and it may also have escaped the memories of other hon. Members. I am not clear why we are repealing Section 7 of the 1945 Act and re-enacting the substance of it in an Amendment which is made to the same Clause.
Thirdly, I see that we are adding two paragraphs—(a) and (b)—to the Clause. The present paragraph (b) is to disappear. In the amended Clause, therefore, there will presumably be three paragraphs—(a) and (b), which are the first and second Amendments, and the present paragraph (a) which, I presume, will become paragraph (c). Are we right therefore, in concluding that there will be three paragraphs in future? Can the hon. Gentleman tell us why we are repealing and re-enacting Section 7 of the 1945 Act, and will the hon. Gentleman read us the text of the Clause as it will stand when the Amendments are made?

Mr. Vosper: I agree with the hon. Member for Fulham, West (Mr. M. Stewart) about the complexity of the Clause as amended. Section 7 of the 1945 Act is being repealed because we are replacing Section 6 of the 1925 Act by the proposed new Clause dealing with the reemployment of teachers. It becomes necessary to repeal Section 7 of the 1945 Act and to re-enact it in this particular form. This point was not dealt with in the Standing Committee, but I understand that that is the reason for the Amendment.
The hon. Member is quite correct about the number of paragraphs. There will now be three paragraphs, or provisos. I understand that the order in which they will be printed is a matter for consideration after the Report stage, but I think that the first proviso will be that which

deals with annual allowances; the second, that which deals with the lump sum and short-service gratuity—the original paragraph (a); and the third, that which deals with the twelve months' period, which is being re-enacted in more suitable words.
I will willingly read the operative part of the amended Clause, which consists of the three provisos. It will now read:
Provided that—

(a) any subsequent annual allowance shall be in substitution for any annual allowance previously granted to the teacher, and the amount of any such subsequent allowance, exclusive of any increase by virtue of any election under section ten of this Act, shall be not less than the amount of the allowance previously granted, exclusive of any such increase;
(b) there shall be deducted from the amount of any subsequent additional allowance or short service gratuity the amount of any additional allowance or short service gratuity previously granted to the teacher;
(c) no subsequent annual allowance or additional allowance shall be granted unless the teacher has been employed in contributory service for a period of, or for periods amounting in the aggregate to, at least twelve months since the last previous grant of such an allowance."
I should add that the Clause will be further complicated by further Amendments which will be moved at a subsequent stage.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendments made: In page 10, line 23, leave out paragraph (b) and insert:
(b) no subsequent annual allowance or additional allowance shall be granted unless the teacher has been employed in contributory service for a period of, or for periods amounting in the aggregate to, at least twelve months since the last previous grant of such an allowance.
In line 36, at end insert:
(3) For the purposes of paragraph (b) of the proviso to subsection (1) of this section so far as it relates to annual allowances, any employment before the commencement of this Act which would have been contributory service if section six of this Act had been in force shall be treated as contributory service.
(4) Section seven of the Teachers (Superannuation) Act, 1945 (which provides that a subsequent annual allowance shall be of an amount not less than that of an annual allowance previously granted), is hereby repealed.—[Mr. Vosper.]

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Orders of the Day — Clause 15.—(AMENDMENT OF TEACHERS (SUPERANNUATION) ACT, 1937, s. 2.)

Sir D. Eccles: I beg to move, in page 13, line 26, at the end to insert:
and after sub-paragraph (iii) there shall be inserted the following sub-paragraph—
' (iv) as a teacher in any school maintained within the United Kingdom by the Government of any part of Her Majesty's Dominions outside the United Kingdom; or.

The Chairman: It might be for the convenience of the Committee to discuss at the same time the Amendment in the name of the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, in page 24, line 39, at the end to insert:
(iv) as a teacher in any school maintained within the United Kingdom by the Government of any part of Her Majesty's Dominions outside the United Kingdom; or.

Sir D. Eccles: This Clause is very interesting. It deals with the employment of teachers overseas. The main purpose of the Clause is to allow a young man or young woman to count years of service in a teaching post overseas for pension when they come back again and take a post in this country. Those years are to be allowed to count, and that will be useful.
We discovered one interesting loophole. There are certain training colleges in this country maintained by the Government of Malaya. We naturally feel that teachers who have gone to Kirkby, near Liverpool, which was the first of these colleges, or to the second, at Brinsford Lodge, near Wolverhampton, and who at present have their pension rights only temporarily protected, should have this matter put upon a proper basis. That is the effect of the Amendment. A similar Amendment is to be proposed for the Scottish part of the Bill.
I have taken an interest in these two Malayan students' colleges. The Malayan Minister of Education, Dato Abdul Razak, came to see me the other day. The Committee might like to know how highly he thought of the work that is being done in those colleges. I feel sure that hon. Members will agree with the Government that we should insert this Amendment.

Dr. Horace King: We welcome not only the Clause but the Amendments which were moved to it in the Standing Committee, in the same spirit. I am sure that the Committee now welcome the further extension

of the Clause dealing with the specific group of colleges, which might otherwise have been excluded. At the back of our minds, and especially that of the Minister, is the idea that we wish to make it easy for teachers to go to the Commonwealth and to exchange teachers with the Commonwealth. We do not want teachers to lose pension rights because, in the interests of Britain and of the Commonwealth, they do a valuable piece of work. Both the teachers and the Commonwealth benefit by such exchanges. If there is a loophole it is good that the Minister should have found it, and I congratulate him.

Mr. M. Stewart: May I add a word of agreement with what my hon. Friend the Member for Itchen (Dr. King) has said? We were particularly interested in the special explanation which the Minister was able to give for the Amendment. The general purpose of the Clause was well received when the Bill was in Standing Committee. We examined then what Amendments could be made. Now the Minister has drawn our attention to a further extension of this principle to cover these two colleges. If I understand him aright, it is simply those two colleges which are in issue, but it may well be that other institutions in the future will benefit from the operation of the Amendment, and we are very glad to accept it and to welcome it.

Miss Margaret Herbison: I understand that we are taking the Amendment which the Minister has moved with the Amendment in line 39. I would ask a question of the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. The Minister gave the reasons why this matter had been brought to his notice; have we in Scotland at the present time any such institution where teachers will be covered by this provision?

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. J. Henderson Stewart): I think the answer is "No," but, as the hon. Lady will know, Scottish teachers may be seconded for service to one or other of the colleges to which my right hon. Friend has referred. It seemed therefore desirable that we should offer them the same facility.

Mr. Short: In Committee we inserted an Amendment to the Clause which gave the Minister power to vary the five years


by extending it. All I am asking is that he uses that power generously. There are cases where it can be used, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not be too sticky. If he is asked to vary it to six years or eight years, I hope that he will treat the teachers concerned kindly and will allow them to have the whole period.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Orders of the Day — Clause 16.—(FURTHER PROVISIONS AS TO SERVICE IN SCHOOLS ABROAD.)

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Dennis Vosper): I beg to move, in page 14, line 29, after "salary" to insert:
or to the repayment to teachers or their legal personal representatives of contributions under the said Part II.
The purpose of the Amendment is to make sure that teachers who return from service abroad and enter service at home for a period insufficient to enable them to qualify for the allowances are able to get back their contributions with interest.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Orders of the Day — Clause 29.—(AMENDMENT OF PART I OF THE THIRD SCHEDULE TO THE ACT OF 1946.)

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I beg to move, in page 24, line 22, to leave out "subparagraph" and to insert "sub-paragraphs."

The Chairman: This Amendment might go with the Amendment in the name of the same Joint Under-Secretary of State, in page 25, line 12, at the end to insert a new subsection (11).

Sir D. Eccles: On a point of order. The Amendment seeks to do the same thing as a new Clause standing in my name. Would it be convenient if we took the new Clause with my hon. Friend's Amendment? It does the same kind of thing, reckoning service of value to teachers.

The Chairman: Certainly. I had not realised that that was so.

Miss Herbison: It looks as if the Minister will make the first speech on this matter, but the Amendment that is

first on the Order Paper is in the name of the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. I ask that the Joint Under-Secretary be allowed to deal with this matter in the first instance, since it was discussed pretty fully in the Scottish Standing Committee. I ask it before we get agreement on the suggestion made by the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: rose—

Mr. M. Stewart: I was not sure whether the Joint Under-Secretary was going to rise, but I want to put a point about the procedure in the concurrent discussion of these Amendments with the proposed new Clause. There is a complication about it. It was agreed that the Amendments standing in the name of the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland and the proposed new Clause in the Minister's name should be discussed together, because they deal with the same matter and that would be helpful. I ask your guidance, Sir Charles, on two points. There is down for consideration at a later stage a proposed new Clause in the names of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), of some of my hon. Friends and of myself, dealing with this matter also. It would be a great help if you could tell us whether that new Clause is likely to be called.

The Chairman: It is not for me to say, because it is a matter for the Speaker, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman in the strictest confidence that as the proposed new Clause would increase the charge it is out of order.

Mr. M. Stewart: I am obliged to you, Sir Charles, for that confidential information. I can only hope that it may be in order, when we are discussing the Amendments and the new Clause in the name of the Minister, to make comparisons between this new Clause and the one which, in happier circumstances, my hon. and right hon. Friends and I would have like to move.
4.30 p.m.
The other point to which I should like to draw your attention, Sir Charles, is one of some importance. There was also to be considered a new Clause at the bottom of page 2179, in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for


South Shields, concerning National Service, which reads:
(1) Where any person serves a term of whole-time service in the regular forces in pursuance of the National Service Act, 1948, and subsequently becomes employed in contributory service, the period of such service shall be treated as if it were a period of contributory service.
(2) No contributions shall be payable by or in respect of any such person under section nine of the principal Act.
The Minister's new Clause and the Scottish Amendment which we are about to discuss also made reference to National Service, but explicitly prescribe that National Service shall not be regarded as employment of value to the teacher within the terms of the Minister's new Clause. If, Sir Charles, you are able again to tell us confidentially whether the new Clause on National Service is likely to be discussed, it will be of great help to us in our present discussion. If it is not, I think that many of us would like to lay special stress on the fact that the Minister's proposed new Clause contains what we regard as an adverse reference to National Service.

The Chairman: I may say in confidence that the new Clause at the bottom of page 2179, in the name of the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), also increases the charge and is therefore out of order.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I think that I should make clear that the Amendment which I am now proposing is in page 24, line 22, to leave out "sub-paragraph" and to insert "sub-paragraphs."
We are also considering the Amendment on the top of page 2177, to insert subsection (11). As the Committee will have gathered, I am dealing with the same point as that which my right hon. Friend will be dealing with in his new Clause, but I am glad to respond to the invitation of the hon. Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) that it would be for her convenience and that of her hon. Friends if I began the discussion.

The Chairman: We are also considering the Minister's new Clause on page 2178.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: That is correct, Sir Charles. The first is merely

a drafting Amendment made necessary in order that we may add other subparagraphs. The hon. Lady and her hon. Friends have a somewhat similar Amendment to this which I believe comes under the Report stage, but I do not know whether I am allowed to refer to it—probably not. I think, however, that it may be right at this stage to say that what the hon. Lady and her hon. Friends seek is not exactly the same as what we want in our Amendment.
This matter was discussed by the hon. Lady and myself and other hon. Members in the Scottish Committee upstairs. The differences which we found there between their view and ours was that under their ideas late entry to the profession, which is a vague and undefined phrase. would be the only test, whereas under the Amendment which I am now moving it has to be shown that the person was gaining experience of value to him as a teacher, and the Secretary of State is given the duty of deciding whether this has been done or not.
As the Committee knows, there are four periods when we think of a man in this position. Those are service in the first war, service in the second war, National Service, and occupations of various kinds outside the teaching profession. I do not want to pursue that in great detail. In the case of the first war, when a man got some kind of exemption it was clearly defined what it should be. There cannot be many men teaching today who would be much concerned about the position at that time. There may be some, but I cannot think that there will be many.

Mr. G. Thomas: There are plenty of them.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I was in the first war myself and I know what the age limit is. If hon. Members want details of that we can discuss it later. In the second war, the emergency period, as in the first war, defines the periods with which we are concerned. The emergency period in the last war was from 1st September, 1939, to 31st March, 1949. Under the provisions of the Education (Scotland) (War Service Superannuation) Act, 1939, teachers who left teaching for war service had their war service counted for superannuation purposes. In addition, a person who became a teacher after the war and had given war service during


the period between the date on which he was admitted or accepted for admission to a training centre and the date when he completed his teaching training, could have his war service recorded.
Arrangements were made at the beginning of the war for students at universities to apply on a certain form for admission to training colleges before doing their war service. One has to recognise, because it is a fact, that some of those students left for war service without filling up the form. Scottish teachers have come to me from time to time on behalf of those men and said, "It is hard luck that they went without signing the form and so lose their rights." I have said to the teachers—and I repeat it gladly now—that the Secretary of State is prepared to consider any further evidence of acceptance of admission to training colleges, or whatever it may be, other than the particular form if that evidence can be put up and if it is reliable.
The next group of people are those in National Service. The National Service period with which we are concerned began on 1st January, 1949. The Superannuations (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1948, provides in relation to all the public services that only National Service which interrupts civilian employment can count for pension. It would not be justifiable, therefore, to place teachers in a more favourable position than other public servants.

Mr. W. G. Cove: May I ask the Joint Under-Secretary to give instances of cases where this applies? What other services?

Mr. Stewart: The Civil Service, local government service and, I believe, National Health Service. The Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1948, applied to all public services.

Mr. Cove: In those cases the large majority are in employment and therefore get their service counted. As a class, teachers are singled out in this respect.

Mr. Stewart: I think that the hon. Member is not quite right about that. I think that the point which he has in mind is this. In the Civil Service a number of recruits undoubtedly come in

at an early age. But we must deal with comparable persons. A teacher is normally a person who goes to a university or a training college—in Scotland to a university—to become a teacher. Very often after that, he does his training, and to compare him reasonably with someone in the Civil Service one has to compare him with a man who has already done the same kind of thing—not with a man who has entered the Civil Service at seventeen, but with someone who has been through the university, and so on. If we take these comparable persons, I am correct in saying that the Act applies equally fairly to both classes.
The fourth group concerns those who come from other trades and industry into teaching, occupations providing experience of value to teachers. Under the salary Regulations, speaking for Scotland at the moment, various types of work before a person becomes a teacher can count as periods for placing the teacher higher on the salary scale than his teaching service alone would have allowed. An example is the period during which a teacher was gaining experience which in the opinion of the Secretary of State is or would likely be of value to him. We are thinking particularly of the man who has been in industry. We are very anxious to get this sort of man into our schools. There is no doubt that those who have done two or three years in industry may gain enormously by it and be of great value to us, particularly in our technical education.
It is periods such as these, which we recognise for salary purposes, that teachers want also to be recognised for pension purposes. We are prepared to accept that type of period and that, in essence, is the Amendment which I am moving. I have no doubt that that part of it will find general acceptance in the House, although it may well be that hon. Members may feel that we could have gone a little further.

Dr. King: I hope the Committee will give some consideration to this Amendment. I want to address my remarks to one phrase which, in both its Scottish and English aspects, says that the Secretary of State and the Minister are empowered to take note of
… experience which, in the opinion of the Secretary of State "—


or the Minister—
…is likely to be of value to him as a teacher.…
I think the whole Committee will agree that these are days when we are learning the value of the mature student. Indeed, the Minister himself makes provision, rather meagre provision, for men to come late from the work bench into education. Our experience of the influx of ex-Service men into the universities at the end of the First World War, and of the impact of the emergency-trained-teacher group brought in after this war shows that education has much to gain from someone who comes into the profession after some experience of the world outside. I was going to refer to the cloistered virtue of the university, but after what my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) said a few days ago about the universities, perhaps "virtue" would be out of place.
We have to consider the supreme end, justified by our experience of the last five years, of taking men out of industry into technical education; the recruitment as teachers in technical colleges of hundreds and thousands of men who have practised their subject themselves. I am a little worried that the Minister is prepared to accept only five years of such experience for pension purposes. I hope that when he replies he will say whether it is not possible to count more than five years of previous service in industry for those coming in to teach at the technical colleges.
If it is true that experience of the world helps the teacher, if it is true that there is something in what Charles Lamb—I think it was—said, that the teacher is inclined to be a boy among men and a man among boys, and that the jump from the university to the class-room might be improved if there were an intervening period spent out in life among men—if all that is true, then it is abundantly true of the National Service man.

Notice taken that 40 Members were not present;

House counted, and 40 Members being present—

4.45 p.m.

Dr. King: As I was saying, Mr. MacPherson, if our experience since the war has been that maturity and experi-

ence of life is of value to the teaching profession, then that must be abundantly true of the two years' experience a man gets in National Service, yet we deprive the young teacher who has served his country for two years of counting those two years, although they must benefit him in his future career as a teacher. Indeed, we go even further than that, and deprive the young lads of the First World War, those who moved from the sixth form to the battlefields of France, of counting that service for pension.
The Minister's defence has been that the difference between teachers and both civil and local government servants is that, in the latter cases, it is interrupted service. It is said that they have started earning their living and because of that their careers have been interrupted by National Service and the two years count for pension. On the other hand, the teacher, in the nature of things, has not started earning his living. His career, like that of many of the learned professions, means a period in school during which he is getting no salary. Indeed, whatever maintenance grants are given, it still means a sacrifice for many parents. He then goes to college or university where he is earning no money and where, again, despite the generosity of modern grants, his continued existence at college represents a sacrifice for his famly. He then plunges from what is really his apprenticeship quite as much as is the clerk's apprenticeship in local government or the Civil Service—and an utterly unpaid apprenticeship—into National Service.
The Minister has said that we have to compare like with like. But the bulk of the Civil Service does not consist of university-trained graduates, whatever Burgess and Maclean might have been—though neither was professionally, educationally or morally representative of the Civil Service. It is literally true that the great majority of civil servants and local government officers count their National Service for pension purposes. We argue that that ought to be true in the case of teachers.
There is another angle to it. I am a feminist and have spent most of my life advocating equal pay, but unless the present position is altered then, with equal pay being achieved for women teachers, the men are going to suffer an


injustice throughout their lives. The women who enter teaching go from school to college, from college to classroom and begin their teaching career. From the very first moment that career counts for pension purposes. The result is that a young man going into teaching will enter it two years behind a woman of his same age and right through his career he will be permanently handicapped because he has been doing some service for Britain—a period of National Service—and the woman has not.
I am one of the odd people who think that, as long as we have National Service, there is no reason under the sun why women should not do it as well as men. It might even be a good thing to say that if we call up young men from the ages of eighteen to twenty to do something quite uncomfortable for the country, we could equally justifiably ask the young women of this country to go into the hospitals and do a period of service in the same spirit. I do not suppose that I could carry the Committee with me on that, but certainly we ought not to let this injustice remain.
I hope it will be possible before this Bill passes for the Minister to concede what we are asking, which is that the two years in which a teacher serves his country between college and going into the class-room should be counted for his pension, whether he pays for it or not. I understand that one of our later Amendments, in which we suggest that he should not pay for it, is ruled out of order. Whether he buys it in or not may be debatable, but that he has a right to count it is irresistible. I hope that before we leave this Bill we shall do something on these lines, which I regard as merely an act of justice to the teaching profession.

Miss Herbison: The Joint Under-Secretary of State, in moving this Amendment, was much more subdued and placatory than he was on the occasion in the Scottish Grand Committee when we discussed a similar subject. He made some comparisons between the Amendment which he has moved and the Amendment standing in my name and the names of some of my hon. Friends. The one big difference in the first part of the Minister's Amendment is that it is laid down that, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, the teacher's previous

work must have given him experience that would be of value to teaching. At the present time this applies to teachers in Scotland in placing them on the salary scale.
After my experience in the Scottish Office, I found that there were some teachers who found it most difficult indeed to accept the decision of the Secretary of State on this matter, and it is for that reason, but not only for that reason, that my hon. Friends and I much prefer our Amendment to that which the hon. Gentleman has just moved. We feel that it would have been very much better to give, as of right, to these people whom we are trying to attract to the teaching profession this chance of buying so many years of superannuated service.
I would ask both the Joint Under-Secretary and the Minister to give some further thought to this matter, because if they do not agree with what we are asking for today, both of them will find from time to time that teachers will be even more disgruntled than they are at the present moment. That is all I wish to say on the first part of the Minister's Amendment.
I want now to deal with the second part. The Minister has told us that, in discussions with the Educational Institute of Scotland, he has said that the Secretary of State would be willing to accept some other form of evidence of intention than the form which these young men were supposed to fill up before they went on their war service. It would be very difficult indeed for me to think of any other form of evidence, and the Minister has said that he agrees. It seems to me then that this promise by the Secretary of State for Scotland to the Educational Institute of Scotland has no substance whatever. In effect, since I can find no other form of evidence that could be given, since the Joint Under-Secretary agrees that it would be very difficult to find another form of evidence, it means that these teachers who have been deprived of these years in the reckoning for pension purposes will be no further forward as a result of this promise by the Secretary of State.

Mr. Stewart: The hon. Lady is talking about men who served in the Second World War, as I was. What I said was that I had said to the teachers that if it


is possible to find other evidence, we will be very glad to look at it, but I must say that neither the teachers, ourselves nor the hon. Lady have yet been able to find any other form of evidence of intention of entering the teaching profession. Therefore, in a sense, I am agreeing with the hon. Lady.

Miss Herbison: That is what I feel—that we are in complete agreement about the fact that it would be impossible to find evidence, and, since that is the case, no concession whatever has been made by the Secretary of State to these very deserving teachers in Scotland.
Now, I want to come to the part of the Amendment that deals with National Service. I was not at all surprised to find that this part was included, because I remember so well what the Joint Under-Secretary said on this matter in the Scottish Standing Committee. He used these words:
The State had to have evidence that a man was honestly intending to be a teacher, otherwise all kinds of crooks and fakes could come along and say 'I intended to be a teacher,' without any justification.
He was talking about people who wanted to be teachers, and he went on to say:
The State had to have an assurance and absolute evidence that a man intended to be a teacher. There are all kinds of people who are prepared to batten on the State.
The Joint Under-Secretary went further and said:
There are many evil-minded people about the world who would like to batten on the State and get money from the State. We cannot open the door to evilly-disposed people."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Scottish Standing Committee, 16th February, 1956; c. 184–5.]
We must remember that all that was said in the context of these men who had served the nation as soldiers and who had ultimately decided to become teachers, and were in fact teachers.
For the life of me, I cannot understand the attitude of a Government willing to consider service in industry, provided that one can show that it is of value to teaching, and in the same Clause giving no consideration at all to the two years which these young men must do in National Service. If we were to take it merely on value to teaching, surely the two years which these young men spend in National Service, very often in places outside this country, should be of the

greatest value to them when they become teachers. I should have thought that, if we were to consider the matter only from that point of view, there is everything to be said for reckoning those two years for pension purposes once the young man becomes a teacher.
The main argument that the Joint Under-Secretary gave today was that, if this principle were accepted for teachers, there would be repercussions, and it would have to apply to everyone else in the public service. I think the first paragraph of his Amendment knocks the bottom completely out of that argument. Will the Minister when he replies be able to tell us that in the Civil Service consideration is given to late entrants, provided that they can prove that the work they were doing previously was of value to them as civil servants? If that is not the case, then already in this Amendment we are making an exception in favour of the teachers, and we are doing that because of the desperate shortage of teachers. I ask the Minister and the Joint Under-Secretary to give further consideration to this point because their main argument has no substance whatever.
5.0 p.m.
My final point on the question of National Service relates to the fact that under the provisions of the Bill a man may count 45 years for pension purposes. I do not know so much about the position in England, but I have tried to reckon what will be the position of an honours graduate in Scotland who decides to become a teacher. He will have to do two years' National Service. In almost every instance he will have reached the age of 70 before he can enjoy a pension based on 45 years' service. On the other hand, the woman teacher who is an honours graduate will be able to enjoy her pension at 68. The woman is not only getting equal pay, which she should have as a matter of right, but has a further advantage over her male colleague which I do not think any woman in the teaching profession would wish to have. I am sure that women teachers support us when we again ask the Government to do justice to the men for whom National Service is compulsory.

Mr. William Ross: One pleasing feature of the debate so far is that we have had a complete change of


tone from the Joint Under-Secretary of State. I regret that many of my English colleagues did not have the advantage of hearing the hon. Gentleman's considered views on this matter and on the teaching profession in the Scottish Standing Committee. If they had done so, they would have realised that—

Mr. Cove: There would be a row.

Mr. Ross: —that the Minister of Education would have to look to his laurels. Such was the performance of the Joint Under-Secretary that he immediately became a candidate for the Minister of Education's job, so temperate and so tactful was his language.
The first thing we have to remember in relation to the Amendment is that we are dealing with teachers. Before anyone can obtain an advantage from the Amendment, he has to be a teacher. That was what the Joint Under-Secretary forgot. If those concerned are teachers, it does not matter very much to me whether in the past they have done National Service, been employed in a certain job, or otherwise. We should apply to them all the same criteria as to whether they should have the advantage of counting for pension purposes past service outwith the teaching profession.
The Government do not do that. The Government say to the teachers, "If you came into the teaching profession from industry never having had the slightest intention of becoming a teacher until the moment of decision, we will give you this very valuable concession, but if you had the patriotic duty of doing National Service, provided you were passed A.1 to do it—if you were unfit, you could have resumed your university career and then gone to the training college and into the profession right away—you will not get the concession."
Because of the two years spent doing National Service, the male teacher will be penalised for the rest of his teaching life. He will be two years behind others of the same age who did not do National Service. Also, the other people will be able to retire with full pension rights two years before he can. As was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison), the result of denying this advantage to National Service men may well be that they will never be able to secure full pension rights. It

seems to me that in order to obtain full pension rights they will have to stay in the profession until they are 69. If they are honours graduates, they will have to stay until they are 70 or 71, and probably longer.

Mr. G. Thomas: Until they are 73.

Mr. Ross: There is no justification for the Government's action. The Government are meeting our demands in respect of persons who come from industry into the teaching profession, but in respect of National Service men they cling to past conditions which, as has been demonstrated by the Joint Under-Secretary, have presented difficulties in the past. In clinging to past conditions, the Government are ignoring the long continuance of National Service. It is no good talking about something that was said in 1948 when the understanding at the time that National Service was introduced was that it was to finish as soon as the emergency ended. The Joint Under-Secretary also forgets the effect of equal pay.
In his comparisons, the hon. Gentleman forgets the effect of National Service. He says that the arrangements must be the same as those for the Civil Service or some other local government service. The insistence on evidence that the young man intended to take up teaching implies that he had finished his university career and applied for a place in a training college before doing National Service. The Joint Under-Secretary served in the First World War, but it is a pity that he does not know a little more about conditions these days. Many people do their National Service before they go to the university or the training college, and others who fail in a subject at the university have perforce to break their career and do their National Service. Consequently, when they are doing their National Service they may not by that time have made up their minds whether they are to be teachers. To penalise them in the way that is proposed has no justification, and there is no logic in the Clause.
We remember what the Joint Under-Secretary said in respect of these teachers, whose case was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. Hamilton). The Joint Under-Secretary has referred to them as crooks and evilly-disposed persons. What are they doing in the teaching profession if they are like


that? The hon. Gentleman should look at the position from the point of view of doing justice to people already in the profession and from the point of view of recruitment to the profession. The Government's action will represent such a disadvantage to young men that the chances are that they will prefer to enter industry rather than the teaching profession. They ought not to be denied this elementary right. There should be no penalty on patriotism, which is what the Government are insisting upon.
I am sure that the Minister of Education is thinking out a few "song and dance" remarks for us. I hope he will attempt to make up for his past misdemeanours and say, "You have convinced us. I will take the Clause back and delete the provision which prevents young men who have done National Service from getting this advantage." We welcome the advance which has been made, but we deplore the sad lack of sense which makes the Government insist upon denying justice to National Service men.

Mr. G. Thomas: I was astonished when I heard some of my hon. Friends who preceded me quote the language of the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland in referring to the teaching profession.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I did not interrupt before, but my Scottish colleagues here know quite well that when those exchanges took place in Scottish Grand Committee we were all a little "het up"—[HON. MEMBERS "Oh."] May I be allowed to continue? At the following Sitting I was invited by the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) to explain or withdraw any aspersions I might unwittingly have made, and I did so. In justice to myself and to my hon. Friends, I think I should read to the Committee what I then said. This was on 21st February. I said:
First, I respond immediately to his…
that is, the hon. Member for South Ayrshire—
inivitation that I should clarify what I said with regard to teachers. If anything I said can be interpreted as an aspersion against the teachers,…

Mr. Cove: What else could it be?

Mr. Henderson Stewart: May I continue? I said:
I of course immediately and entirely withdraw. I did not mean that at all."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Scottish Standing Committee, 21st February, 1956; c. 197.]
In justice to me the hon. Member might at least have quoted that.

Mr. Thomas: It may be that the hon. Gentleman has made a statement, which I understand he is explaining he withdrew, in which there was a charge against the teaching profession—

Mr. Ross: May I interrupt my hon. Friend to say that I did not consider that the hon. Gentleman made the statement in any great flurry of heat and excitement. The excitement started after he said it. The interruptions came as soon as he said it. The hon. Gentleman insisted on repeating it and putting it into what he probably thought was better chosen language. It is all on the record.

Mr. Thomas: If we look at the words of the hon. Gentleman, we see that he said:
The State had to have evidence that a man was honestly intending to be a teacher, otherwise all kinds of crooks and fakes could come along and say 'I intended to be a teacher,' without any justification.
The point is that they are within the profession when they make this claim. The Minister continued:
The State had to have an assurance and absolute evidence that a man intended to be a teacher. There are all kinds of people who are prepared to batten on the State."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Scottish Standing Committee, 16th February, 1956; c. 184–5.]
I am a fellow Celt; I am a Welshman speaking English and the hon. Gentleman is a Scotsman doing his best. It would ill become me, Sir Charles, in your presence, to be other than merciful to the Minister. I know that he must be very sorry that he said those words, but I am growing accustomed to apologies from this Department and from anyone connected with the Ministry of Education.
This Amendment which the Minister is proposing today will create a festering sore in the profession for years to come. This Amendment is going to leave all future men entrants to the teaching profession who have served in the forces with a sense of grievance and resentful indignation. The Minister knows that the


National Union of Teachers has made consistent representations to him to cover the case of these teachers. The State takes these men whether they want to go or no—unless they register as conscientious objectors, in which case I gather a teacher has a privilege. The House knows my opinion on the question of conscientious objection. I am all in favour. I am not against a man exercising his right of conscience, but I do not say he ought to have privileges over the rest of the community when he does exercise that right.

Dr. King: The conscientious objector does not get the privilege; he is specifically mentioned.

Mr. Thomas: I beg pardon; I am grateful for the help of my hon. Friend the Member for Itchen (Dr. King).
Why should a young man who has served the nation—perhaps travelled in a way he would not have travelled and can bring to the class-room a broader vision than otherwise he might have brought—suffer all through his teaching career, or at the time when he stands in greatest need of help?
5.15 p.m.
The Minister raised our hopes first with the general terms of the Motion about which he gave us prior notice. It is true that the Minister did not commit himself to give us what we ask. The objection appears to be that to do justice to the teacher would require the Government doing justice to other people as well. That is the main burden of the case against us, that civil servants and local government people would have a claim upon the State. How much would it cost to do the right thing? How much would it cost in comparison with conscription? How much would it cost in future years when the period of conscription may very well be reduced? We shall have people with varying degrees of grievance against this State.
Who believes that National Service will continue as a two-year period for the next decade? During that time if it is ended—and certainly there is enough lip-service to the fact that it is only temporary—that would reduce the cost of doing the right thing. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have told us that they are looking forward to the day when they will be able to end conscription. That would limit the cost

which the Minister has to envisage if he is to do the right thing. If it is reduced to a year, if the point of view of the official Opposition is adopted and the period reduced by a number of months, we shall have some young people who are penalised by the extent of two years and others to the extent of the newly-limited period.
It is always wiser to do the big thing. In this Bill the Minister has done enough to upset the teaching profession. He has created a more divided profession than I have ever known, more bitterness, frustration and resentment in the classroom than there has been in my lifetime. The Minister today has a chance to do the right thing on this question. If he did the right thing for these young people in the Forces, for those who have been in the Forces and those who are to serve in future, he would find the teachers would respond generously to a generous gesture.
The Minister must not expect teachers to do all the forthcoming all the time. He must not expect them to be context with his present attitude. I ask him even now at this late stage to look again at this question. There is no responsible teachers' organisation in the country which could afford, even if it so desired, to allow this matter to rest where it is. For years there will be agitation, there will be protests and this will be a matter for teachers conferences. We have been unable to discuss our Amendment owing to the technicalities of the rules of debate. If this Clause goes through unamended, I warn the Minister it will create more trouble. It is so foolish of the Government when they can see trouble on the horizon not to take steps to deal with it.
One thing which has hurt and disturbed me very much has been the absence of hon. Members from this debate today. They will be here at 10 o'clock tonight.

Mr. Leslie Hale: Lobby fodder.

Mr. J. C. Jennings: The hon. Member should look behind him; not many of his hon. Friends are present.

Mr. Thomas: I am glad to hear the voice of the hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Jennings). I thought he had forgotten how to speak.

Mr. Jennings: The hon. Member knows very well my attitude to the Bill. It is quite unfair of him to say that I have forgotten how to speak. He knows the position quite well.

Mr. Hale: What is the position?

Mr. Thomas: I hope we will hear the hon. Member on the Amendment. Let him come forward and tell the Minister what he thinks of this proposal. The hon. Member need not sit in silence. He knows he can speak up on behalf of these young teachers and I earnestly advise him to do so. I admire his point of view on the Bill, because it is a view I share.

Mr. Hale: What is the hon. Member's position?

Mr. Thomas: The hon. Member has great self-restraint and self-discipline but perhaps later he will break through and let us have the benefit of his opinion. Again, I ask the Minister to look at this question and to realise that together with the widows' and orphans' scheme, it is one of the main issues concerning the profession at the present time.

Mr. S. O. Davies: I intervene only for a few minutes. I am sure the Minister will be interested to hear of a recent experience of mine within the House. I hope that my hon. Friends from the teaching profession will permit an upstart like myself to take up a few minutes of the time of the Committee.
A young constituent of mine who is undergoing his two years' National Service called to see me in the House six or seven weeks ago, having been drafted to Germany. He had completed one year of National Service. Incidentally, he had been accepted at one of our older universities.
During his first year of National Service, facilities were provided for him to study Russian. Incidentally, I had nothing whatever to do with putting the idea into his head that he should study that interesting and difficult language. At the end of twelve months' service he sat an examination, the results of which I have seen. He passed his examination in the Russian language at a level equal to scholarship standard. He had not taken up Russian before he joined the Forces. Now he is in Germany and I

am fairly confident that he will master the German language in the same way as he has mastered Russian.
There is a strong possibility that this young man may ultimately go into the teaching profession. Is it not an absurd commentary upon the miserable disqualification that the Minister is trying to put into the Bill that this young man would be deprived of what is tantamount to two years' educational work which might be of considerable help not only to himself but, let us hope, to many other people? Should the Minister care to have the young man's address—in private, of course—I shall be pleased to give it to him.
That is one unsolicited example which has come to my notice. A considerable number of youngsters go through the secondary grammar schools and reach advanced or scholarship standard and then undergo their two years' National Service before going to the university. Surely, there is a general desire that their two years' National Service should be transformed into an educational experience as much as anything else. I hope that the Minister will pay a little attention to these experiences of one who is not a member of the teaching profession.

Mr. W. T. Williams: I welcome as much of the Amendment as enables people who have done other forms of work to have the advantage of a five years' allowance for the purposes of their pension ultimately as teachers. I am hesitant, however, because in the latter part of the Amendment we have had an example of the rigidity and stringency of view that Ministers will take. Indeed, we have not been greatly encouraged to expect from the Department—particularly, perhaps, from the Scottish Department—any great sympathy for people who apply to the Ministry for the exercise of its discretion as to what constitutes valuable service from the viewpoint of teaching.
If the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland is to be one of the judges, it is clear that his view of teachers in general and of the teaching profession is so low that we can assume that his approach will be so stringent that few people will derive benefit from the Clause.
It is clear that the Minister of Education and the Department have again gone out of their way to create a good deal of unnecessary bitterness and resentment. I have no doubt that that bitterness and resentment will be increased when it is realised—I should not think the teaching Press will have failed to notice this—that the second part of the Amendment will be pushed through by Members of the House who for the most part have not attended to listen to the merits of the discussion. The situation is a little changed at the moment, but for the greater part of our discussion upon the Amendment, apart from Members from Departments on the Front Bench, only one single Member on the Government side has listened to the debate; and only a few moments ago he declared that his view on this matter is well known and is not sympathetic to the Government.
It is not unremarkable that the hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Jennings), for some peculiar reason, although the only Member in the Government party to be an active member of the teaching profession, was not on the Standing Committee which considered the Bill. I am sure that hon. Members would be delighted to hear exactly what is the view of the hon. Member. The hon. Member says that his opposition is to the Bill in general. We shall be interested to know whether his opposition is carried to the extent of being opposed to that part of the Amendment which we on this side regard as illogical, unfair and unjust.
5.30 p.m.
I was saying that the teaching profession will not be encouraged to feel more generously disposed towards the Minister than they do already when it is realised that he is dependent for forcing this matter through on a great mass of supporters who have not been sufficiently interested even to be present in the Committee for a moment except when they have been called in because of a count. If the right hon. Gentleman is interested in any arguments which might influence him to change his mind, I should like to put forward one which is different from those we have already heard.
In Standing Committee it was proposed, and it was eventually incorporated in the Bill, that teachers should

have the option of continuing to teach until they are 70 years of age. My hon. Friends have already made the point that in the case of male teachers that is the same choice as Mr. Hobson gave to those who wanted to ride his horses because, with the extension of the normal teaching college course to three years and with a two years' National Service, these people will need all the period until they are 70 years of age before they can qualify for a pension.
The disadvantage and unfairness of that in relation to other members of the teaching profession, particularly women and those who, for some reason or other are not called upon to do National Service, must appeal to the Minister. It is not right that people who, for reasons over which they have absolutely no control, have to forfeit two years of their lives to the services of the State, should be further penalised by being prevented from enjoying privileges which others can enjoy because they have not had to shoulder the burden of National Service.
To take advantage of young people who are not masters of their own destiny and do not control their own souls, to take them, as the Government do, from their homes and scatter them to all parts of the earth, and compel them to give two years of their lives to the service of the State, and then take this miserable advantage over them, seems so manifestly unfair that it is almost inconceivable that the Government can refuse to have second thoughts.
I should be glad if, in order to put the matter into proper focus, the Minister gave us an estimate of what it would cost if the Amendment were to include, as well as benefit to people who may do five years in industry, benefit to those who do National Service. I realise that the Minister is faced here with many imponderables, but that never frightened him earlier in the Standing Committee, when he acted actuarially. When he was was asked then about the deficit on the Account he told us that although there would be many imponderables they did not alarm him.
There are imponderables here. It is obvious that the Government's hope, if not their intention, is some time or another to abandon National Service, and that increases unfairness. It is quite obvious that if the Opposition gets its


way, National Service will be reduced very quickly from two years to twelve months, and the Government have expressed their sympathy with that point of view. If that happens, not only will it increase the unfairness between those who are and those who are not doing National Service now, but it will increase the unfairness between those who are doing National Service now and those who are to be called up in the future, who may have to do not two years but twelve months and perhaps even only a nominal period.
Surely it is manifestly unfair that a young teacher should be expected at present both to sacrifice two actual years of his life in the service of the State and to be at a disadvantage compared with others in the same profession. The Minister will know that many people who go into the Services, having had some university training or having had their service deferred until the completion of their training in a training college, are often placed immediately in the Army Educational Corps. A large number of my younger friends and some of my young students have gone into the Army, since the war, holding degrees or having had some kind of academic training, and have been put in the Educational Corps. They have spent the greater part of their two years' National Service actually in teaching.
I hesitate to make too much of this, but it is a parallel illustration to that used by my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. S. O. Davies) that my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) warned me was a dangerous argument, because on this analogy a man could do so much "bull "in the Army that he might become Minister of Agriculture. How can the Minister say, "I will accept as having had valuable experience people who have done five years in industry on some kind of scientific subject, and will regard that as a proper contribution to teaching experience" and then, in the same Amendment, deny that people who have actually done some teaching during their period of military service have had experience of value.
On these grounds I urge the Minister to reconsider, even at this late stage, a matter so illogical, so unfair and unjust,

and to say even now that he will be prepared—and the money cannot be a great deal—to make this further sacrifice. I think that he can do it. Our Amendment is out of order, but we ask that the right hon. Gentleman should do this thing generously and not in the mean spirit now manifested.

Mr. Chetwynd: My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) said that he had never known the teaching profession to be so divided as it is now but, judging from speeches made in this debate, those who have chosen to speak, and they have all been my hon. Friends, have never been more united in condemning an Amendment. I welcome the intention to bring within these provisions people with wider experience of life. I believe that that will make an extremely good contribution to the teaching profession and to education as a whole. I am sure that no one will regret the widening of the scope of that part of the Amendment, but we must all agree that in the provision exempting from the benefits of the Amendment all those who are doing National Service, the Minister has shown no imagination whatsoever.
We are told by those who favour National Service that young men benefit from it and that they come out of the Army better men than they went in. Therefore, on the intrinsic value of National Service alone, we must claim that these two years of service count as much as any other two years in any other walk of life. Certainly, it must be agreed that the National Service men whom my hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court (Mr. W. T. Williams) mentioned as doing all their service in the Army Educational Corps should be qualified to benefit from the provisions of the Amendment.
The words are,
…gaining experience which…is or is likely to be of value to him as a teacher…
The Minister's Amendment rules these people out and gives him no discretion whatever to bring them in. Surely, men who have obtained degrees in science and have technical qualifications and have served in the technical arms of the Services, spending most of their time in giving instruction, must be brought within these provisions as people who have had experience of value to them as teachers. On those grounds alone I appeal to the Minister to reserve to himself a


discretion to bring them in, if he so wishes.
One other argument is that the age of call-up is being gradually increased so that in two years' time people will be called up at the age of 21. They will have completed their National Service by the age of 23. They may then take a two or three-year course at a teachers' training college or at a university. At the end of that their age will be 25 or 26. If we add to that 45 years of pensionable service for full pension, it means that we shall be retaining people who ought to have retired many years before.
So I appeal again to the Minister to count National Service towards pension service. Another point is that a man is now at a disadvantage as compared with a woman because he starts two years after a woman to qualify for full pension. No one would cavil at the fact that equal pay is being given by degrees, but men should not be so altruistic that they are willing to let women have equal pay without claiming rights for men.
Again, a man who does two years' National Service does not qualify under this subsection, but there is nothing to bar one who takes on a three-year engagement, which is one-third longer. For instance, if a man has been engaged in work in the Royal Army Educational Corps or in a technical arm of the Services, and at the end of his three years' service decides on teaching as a career, he will be within the scope of this subsection. It is only a little thing to bring in also the people who have served for two years.
As I have said, the rigidity with which the Government have clung to this point betrays a complete lack of imagination when we are trying to overcome the present difficulties of recruitment. Without throwing much away, the Minister could drop this part of the Clause, because in the first part he retains the discretion as to whether this should be allowed or not. He is unnecessarily restricting himself by retaining it, and in view of the 100 per cent. pressure from this side of the Committee, I hope that he will accept the Amendment.

Mr. Short: I want to put three points to the Minister which require elucidation. The Committee will recollect that about a week ago the House passed a Bill dealing with the position that arises

from the decision of the Constituent Assembly about the status of Pakistan. The gist of that Measure was that Pakistan should not be treated as a foreign country.
As I see it, countries like Pakistan and India, which elect to become Republics but remain within the Commonwealth, cannot be treated as foreign countries. At the same time they cannot be regarded as part of Her Majesty's Dominions. I am wondering what would happen in the case of a teacher who went to serve in a school in India or Pakistan. This problem may well arise in South Africa at some future time, because many English teachers go there to work. We hope she will not do so, but if South Africa should elect to become a Republic but remain within the Commonwealth, what would be their position? Clearly they would not come under subsection 3 (a, i) because South Africa would not be part of Her Majesty's Dominions. So far as I can see, they do not come under subsection 3 (a, ii) because she is not a foreign country, as our own laws exclude that. Again, they are not caught up in subsection 3 (b).
5.45 p.m.
My second question is a domestic one for Members of the House. I raised it once with the predecessor of the Minister. It arises under subsection 3 (b). Would that provision include Members of Parliament? Many teachers become Members of Parliament. In fact, apart from miners, there are probably more ex-teachers than representatives of any other occupation in the House. The fact remains that if they come here before they have completed the minimum thirty years' service they lose their pension rights.
When I took this point up previously, the right hon. Lady the Member for Moss Side (Dame Florence Horsbrugh) took the view that she could not agree to let ex-teacher M.P.s pay their superannuation contributions, and so qualify for those pensions, because to do so would require legislation. Can the Minister tell me, therefore, whether these people can be brought in under subsection 3 (b)? As I read it, he cannot do so.

Sir D. Eccles: Will the hon. Gentleman tell me to which Clause he is referring, because there is no subsection 3 (b) in my new Clause.

Mr. Short: I am talking about subsection (1, a) of Clause 29. I am asking the Minister of Education also if there is any part of his new Clause which would enable him to allow teacher M.P.s to pay their contributions.
My third question concerns a point raised by the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) on the statement made by the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. The hon. Gentleman said that he was seeking other evidence of the intentions of young people, now teachers, who had been in the Forces to come into teaching before entering the Forces. The hon. Gentleman interjected to say that he thought it did not mean much. It seems to me to mean even less than the hon. Gentleman thought, because it means that teachers who served in virtue of an enlistment notice are excluded. I am not sure of the meaning of the phrase "enlistment notice." I do not know whether it means all people called up during the war or only those who enlisted. At any rate, it seems clear that it excludes those who enlisted, and it seems to me unfair that men who enlisted in the war are excluded but that in the case of those called up he is trying to find some other evidence to prove their intention to enter the teaching profession. Could the hon. Gentleman clear up that point?
Finally, I support what has been said about the men who are doing National Service. I hope that the Minister is prepared to think again about this point, which is not a party one. Indeed I am sure that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Burton (Mr. Jennings) would support us in this matter, because there is a great deal to be said for it. A young man coming now into the teaching profession will not be able to get his maximum pension unless the Minister allows him to count his National Service.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. Chetwynd) gave some dates, and I want to emphasise the relevant ones. The normal age of entrance to a university is 18 or 19. If a young man is to become a teacher he will normally take a three-year degree course followed by a year's diploma course, which makes four altogether. That means that he leaves the university at 22 or 23 years of age. Then he undertakes his

National Service, which he finishes at the age of 24 or 25. Obviously he cannot complete the essential 45 years as a teacher unless he reaches the age of 69 or 70.
That is the position of the university graduate. Now take the case of the teacher who joins a teachers' training college. There the course at present is two years, but in the near future the period will be increased to three years. As my hon. Friend pointed out, the age of call-up is being increased. We were told some time ago, in a White Paper, that it would go up to 20 or 21, but assuming that the date of call-up is still 18, a training college student must do his National Service before he goes into a training college. He will start his National Service at 18; come out at 20 and begin teaching at 22—in the very near future at 23. If the call-up age continues to go up, it may be that he will start teaching at the age of 24, 25 or 26. Clearly, such a man cannot get in his 45 years of service before the age of 70. If the call-up age goes up to 23, he will never get in 45 years' service at the age of 70, he will only get in 44 years.
I cannot imagine any other pension scheme in which conditions of this kind obtain, and under which a person must wait until the age of 70 before he gets a maximum pension. I suggest to the Minister that it would cost little if anything were he to allow these men to count their two years of service in the Forces for pension purposes. The Minister could allow them to pay their contributions, say, in the first ten years of teaching. It would not be beyond his wit and ingenuity to work out some sensible, decent scheme to allow them to obtain their proper pension. Every speech in this part of the debate has included a plea to the Minister to do something about this matter, and I add my voice to the appeals which have been made.

Mr. Cove: Most of the arguments in favour of our proposals have already been advanced, but I wish to draw attention to one or two others. The fact is that the present position, for teachers and for those in the Civil Service and local government service, is absurd and anomalous. If a civil servant enters the service at an early age, before going into the Forces, his period of National Service counts, and the


same applies to people in the local government service. If they have been employed, and there is a break in the employment because of National Service, that period will count. But if teachers devote time to further education or more prolonged training, though they may fit themselves educationally for higher spheres in their profession, that period does not count. What an absurd and ridiculous anomaly.
One of the main arguments against recognising this period for pension purposes is because of the repercussions in the higher ranges of the Civil Service and local government service. Why should there not be such repercussions? Why should not this silly anomaly be corrected? We may correct the position of the teachers in this Bill, and we can correct it later for the people in the higher ranges of the Civil Service and local government. Certain other periods of service should be recognised for pension purposes, if they are of value to the teachers. I am not sure whether I am correct, but I presume that in the main that would apply to teachers who have been in industry and gone to technical schools. That again would correct the anomaly caused among members of the teaching profession.
The Minister has already issued a White Paper on technology and the development of technological education, but all that effort will be in vain unless the staff in the ordinary service is well qualified and satisfied. How can we build a structure of technological education on a sufficiently sound foundation unless that is the case? We are asking the Minister to do a wise and sensible thing. I do not see why he cannot do what we suggest, and not rub teachers the wrong way again.
The curious thing is that when we argued for widows' and orphans' pensions on the lines of the Civil Service scheme, we were refused, but now the argument is used in reverse. The Government are using every specious argument to justify a position which cannot be justified. I do not say this in any platitudinous way, but in the present circumstances of the nation it is important that the vast majority of men teachers should feel satisfied. The right hon. Gentleman could contribute towards that state of affairs by agreeing to what we are asking.

Mr. M. Stewart: We have had a wide debate ranging over matters affecting both the Amendment relating to the position in Scotland and the proposed new Clause. We have been concerned both with the general question of making it possible to "buy in" employment of value and with the specifically important question of National Service. What I have to say, therefore, must be divided among those various considerations.
I wish first to stress the importance of some of the remarks made by the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. At one stage the hon. Gentleman referred to men who served in the First World War. It was not clear to me how his Amendment would affect them. But since he brought them into the argument, perhaps I may mention one point which I consider worthy of further consideration, and which is exemplified by an example recently brought to my notice.
It concerns a man who now is considerably advanced in his experience in the teaching profession. He served as a pupil teacher from 1914 to 1916 and waE then accepted for a training college, Shortly after he had been so accepted. and with the full approval of the college authorities, he enlisted, and served in the First World War. He left the Army in 1919 and completed his training in the college in 1921. Now, as a result of that course of action, and as things stand at present, his contributory service is considered to have started in 1921. Had he not enlisted, and had he remained at the training college, his contributory service would have started in 1918. Surely, it is an anomaly that by the act of voluntarily enlisting in 1916, with the consent of the training college authorities, his superannuation position should be altered. Either course of action was open to him, and he chose what most people would regard as the more public-spirited course. Certainly, it was the more dangerous, uncomfortable and unattractive to him, and now he is worse off as a result.
Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman may be able to consider that and similar cases. It may be a matter which could be put right by administrative action or possibly by a further expansion of this Clause when the Bill is considered in another place. But I thought it right to draw attention to that case since the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland


mentioned men who served in the First World War.
I wish now to turn to the provisions in the Minister's new Clause. We see that what is to be done—I think it was inevitable—will be done by rules to be made by the Minister, which will, under Clause 21, be subject to the possibility of Prayers in and discussion in this House. The Clause specifies more or less with precision, the nature of the rules which might be made. For example, the Minister will have to consider the age of the teacher who makes application under the Clause. I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman can tell us what he has in mind about that.
Is he already thinking of a certain maximum age above which he would say to the teacher, "You have not sufficient teaching life ahead of you for me to be justified in allowing you to buy in this service; there is no time for your work to be of value, because you will not be a teacher long enough after it"? On the other hand, is he thinking of an age below which it might be said that the work in which the teacher had been engaged could not, by virtue of his comparative youth, be of value?
6.0 p.m.
There is the question of the definition of employment of value to the teacher. Various other kinds of instructional work have been mentioned as obvious examples, and nobody will dispute them. Experience in industry is of value to a technical teacher, as has also been mentioned. I very much hope that when the right hon. Gentleman comes to make the rules he will not interpret the provision too narrowly. One can easily make a case for saying that almost any period spent in really hard work is of value to the teacher in his profession later on, particularly if it is what one might call an outlandish sort of occupation. The more unusual it is, the greater the extent to which it varies his experience, the more is it likely to be of value to him subsequently in the teaching profession, because—and this argument has already been adduced—one of the difficulties and problems of the teaching profession is that if one is not careful, it is liable to be a narrowing experience.
With that in mind I want to take the example given by my hon. Friend the

Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Short) who referred to people who have added to their teaching experience by service in this House. This is an example worth considering. As the Clause stands at present, it would apply only to persons who have been politically unfortunate in that their period of service in the House had not exceeded five years. Perhaps it is particularly those who should be helped. It may well happen that somebody may leave the teaching profession on being elected a Member and then, possibly as the result of ill-considered action by the Boundary Commissioners, find in a comparatively short time that his prospects of remaining in the House had been substantially reduced.
Goodness knows, people who have not private means run enough risks in taking on service in the House. It is not unreasonable that someone who has done work of that kind should be able to claim that it was of value to him as a teacher. I am sure that experience in Standing Committee D which discussed the Bill would be valuable experience for almost any occupation, and especially for teaching a class of more than forty unruly children.
I developed this example because it is one which we know, but people who have worked in other occupations could similarly demonstrate the desirability of the benefits of the Clause being applied to their work. Another matter for consideration is whether five years is not too low a limit. One must not be unreasonable about this, and there must be some limit of time, but it is a matter for consideration whether five years is not too low a limit. I wonder whether the Minister will be able to tell us the meaning of subsection (4) of the new Clause. I have no doubt that it is one of those things which is legally necessary but perhaps he will oblige us with the necessary technical explanation.
I turn now to a matter involved in subsection (5) of the Minister's new Clause. It is on that subsection that the arguments which my hon. Friends have adduced about National Service are concentrated, and I hope at the appropriate moment to move a manuscript Amendment which I have submitted to the Chair to omit subsection (5) so that the Committee will have an opportunity of expressing its


view in the Division Lobby, if the Minister does not accept the Amendment.
Much has already been said about this topic, but I want to summarise the position in which the Minister now stands regarding the Clause containing subsection (5). We are urging the Minister to regard the period spent in National Service as a period that might legitimately be regarded as of value to somebody subsequently becoming a teacher, and to enable that person to "buy in" such service—as the phrase is.
This proposal is being offered to the Minister in a form which makes it as easy as possible for him to accept it. He is not being asked, as he might have been asked if procedure had worked differently, to allow these young men to count their National Service for pension. without paying contributions. In the present form, he is being asked to do that with the persons concerned paying contributions, a not unreasonable suggestion He cannot raise objection on that score.
Then it is said that if we allow young men to count and pay contributions for their National Service if they are to be teachers, we shall inevitably be obliged so to do in respect of young men in many other occupations.

Mr. Kenneth Thompson: On a point of order. Are we right in assuming from what has just been said that the manuscript Amendment to which the hon. Gentleman has referred will be called, and is in order? Is it not the fact that the counterpart subscriptions paid by the local authorities will be subject to grant which will therefore increase the charge on the funds, and therefore make the Amendment out of order? I do not necessarily want it to be out of order; I merely want guidance.

The Temporary Chairman (Major W. J. Anstruther-Gray): The intention is to call the manuscript Amendment dealing with subsection (5).

Mr. M. Stewart: I am obliged to you, Major Anstruther-Gray. May I respectfully say that I always feel that matters of that kind are best decided by the Chair?
I was dealing with the argument that if we allowed these young men to buy in their National Service, when they were subsequently to be teachers, we should

have to do the same for young men entering other professions. However. that issue was very well dealt with by my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark-shire, North (Miss Herbison). She pointed out that one cannot argue that analogy here, because in the new Clause we are introducing a principle for teachers, that of employment of value. That has not so far been attempted in other professions. It is considered by the Minister, in introducing this new Clause, that employment of value has a special relevance to the teaching profession. We can, therefore, consider what sort of things are employment of value in teaching without having to take the argument any further afield.
The Minister himself is able to avoid allowing men to buy in their National Service only by deliberately excluding it by his new Clause. If his new Clause were without subsection (5), presumably it would be within his discretion to regard National Service as employment of value. What is the purpose of subsection (5)? The addition of subsection (5) shows that in the view of the Government, once special employment of value is admitted, the same consideration might very well apply to National Service. The Government have accordingly deliberately denied that discretion to treat National Service as something which might be of value to someone who subsequently becomes a teacher.
By my Amendment to omit subsection (5) we seek to restore to the Government that discretion. No one will dispute that National Service in all cases can be, and in very many cases actually is, of value to somebody who subsequently becomes a teacher. I am not thinking merely of those young men whose National Service takes an instructional form, such as men who become sergeants in the Educational Corps or who, becoming N.C.O.s, learn the art of instruction. I may say here that one of the very best books on teaching methods which I have ever seen was a booklet issued by the War Office called "Good Instruction." A young man who applies himself to the practice of good instruction would have very considerable experience which would be of value to him as a teacher.
Of course, the general nature of Army life, if a young man chooses to make the best of it, can be of very great value


to him personally and as a teacher, if that be the profession which he subsequently takes up. Inevitably we hear a great deal in the House about young men who go into National Service and do not like it. Personally, I have always had a rather soft spot for those—happily rather more numerous—who go into National Service and make the best of it. Those who do so derive experience of very considerable value. It does seem unreasonable that their chance of being even considered under the powers which the Minister is taking in this Clause should be ruled out by the unnecessary subsection (5).
The hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North pointed out that until our Amendment is accepted considerable injustice will be done between men and women, and that, of course, is particularly marked now that we are on the way towards equal pay.
I thought it was most felicitous that it should be a lady Member of the House who should have drawn the attention of the Committee to that fact and to the danger of doing injustice to the male sex. I was only sorry that there was no hon. Lady opposite to second her plea, just as I was sorry that some of the hon. Members on the other side of the Committee who so frequently draw our attention to what they regard as the benefits of National Service were not here to say a word for the National Service man during this debate.
Where are those hon. Members? At Question Time and in debates hon. Members opposite continually urge the House to realise the excellence of National Service and the importance of doing things-for the Army; there are hon. Members who face with unflinching courage the possibility of other people being drafted and sent abroad to the risks of active service.
Now that we propose to do something for these young men in after-life to save them from unequal treatment as between themselves and members of the opposite sex, where are the defenders of National Service on the other side of the Committee? That is a reasonable question. It is a question which the young men and their parents will be entitled to ask if they study the reports of this debate.
We welcome the Clause and the general principle it involves, and the Scottish Amendment which goes with it. The idea of buying in periods of service of future value to the teacher is a sound one, and we are glad to see it adopted. We hope the Minister will be able—as I am sure he will—to reply to the various questions on detail which have been addressed to him by my hon. Friends and myself as to the kind of scheme that he has in mind.
6.15 p.m.
We particularly ask the right hon. Gentleman to look again at this question of National Service. At this stage, we ask him to do no more than accept an Amendment to his new Clause which would at least put it within his power to say he regards National Service as service of value to somebody who is going to take up the teaching profession. Surely, that is not an unreasonable request.
While my hon. Friends will, if necessary, be prepared to press that matter to a Division, I very earnestly hope that the reply from the Minister will make it unnecessary for us to do so.

Sir D. Eccles: The debate has taken a long time, and I think it has been well worth-while. It has shown what an extraordinarily difficult question is this buying in of previous service.
The difficulty arises, as I think was well pointed out by the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart), over the definition of what is service of value. The hon. Member's words, as I took them down, were, "Almost any period of hard work in any occupation might be considered"—I think quite reasonably—"to add to the experience of a young man or young woman." In some sense, any job, any travel abroad, or just getting married and having a family, having one's own children and bringing them up, must come within the ordinary conception of what service of value would be. Defining the field is the real difficulty.
There is, however, one particular kind of service of value about which I do not believe there could be any dispute, namely, industrial or commercial experience previous to becoming a teacher either in a technical college or in certain posts in secondary schools. When a man or woman comes over from industry or


commerce to a post of that kind, naturally the most direct way of recognising the value of the previous service is by the salary. In fact, that is done. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has wider powers than I have, as hon. Gentlemen opposite will know, to recognise such service in the salary. It is done in England and Wales also, and I have no doubt will have increasingly to be done if we are to get the staff required in the sixth forms of secondary schools and in the technical colleges. Making additions to the salary of the transferring teacher is the main way of recognising such previous service.
But of course, it is true, as was represented to us by the Association of Teachers in Technical Institutions, that the possibility of buying in to the main teachers' superannuation scheme would also be an attraction, though to nothing like the extent that added salary is. The Clause we have put down is designed to meet that class of transferring teacher, and no more.
I am fortified by the Royal Commission on the Civil Service in confining the opportunity to "buy in" to cases where the previous experience is of value in a direct and undisputed way to the kind of teaching which is to be undertaken. I am sure that hon. Gentlemen opposite will realise that the very interesting and very difficult questions relating to what "service of value" is which have been discussed with such knowledge by them were all looked at by the Royal Commission.
I should like to read two most important passages in the Report. In regard to "added years" for all civil servants, paragraph 715 says:
We understand that where arrangements for added years exist in pension schemes in outside employment, they are applied in particular cases at discretion as an aid to recruitment. In our view this is right and proper and should be the principle obtaining in the Civil Service.
Then we come to the recommendation:
We also recommend that the power to grant added years should be used more widely as an instrument of recruitment policy though we think that its exercise should be confined to grades above the basic.…
I agree with that principle, that the one clear set of cases in which it is right to offer the opportunity of "buying in" is where we need to recruit teachers having special qualifications.
An hon. Member asked what happens in the rest of the Civil Service today. If he looks at page 180 of the Report he will find a table showing the type of civil servant affected. There are not very many of them. Looking quickly at it, it seems that at the time the Report was drafted it was mostly those with legal qualifications who had had the advantage of "buying in."
The Clause permits me to make Regulations. I should have liked, for the sake of recruitment, to put in the Clause something much more definite about the categories of previous experience which should be considered as qualifying for "buying in," but we have not been able to do better than subsection (1, b). We consulted the representatives of the teachers, but neither they nor my advisers could think of any tighter form of words. I am sorry about that because, as the hon. Member for Fulham said, it leaves for the Regulations a large number of rather difficult questions which we shall, of course, have to settle in discussion with the teachers.
At this point I should like to answer one or two questions raised by the hon. Gentleman. He mentioned the special case of a man who enlisted in the First World War. I shall be glad to look into it He also asked whether there would be a maximum age and whether a man who came into the scheme nearly at the end of his effective teaching life would be able to "buy in." There will have to be a maximum age, but I do not know what it will be. There will be no minimum age I imagine, because I feel that one would look at the five years previous service.
The hon. Gentleman asked about Members of Parliament. I have had a table made of the pensions position of hon. Gentlemen and hon. Ladies who were good enough to address us during the Commitee stage. They were not good enough to tell us their pension position, but I have had it set out. There are a number of hon. Gentlemen opposite who could go back to teaching if they had the misfortune to lose their seats, and they could qualify again. Interrupted teaching is allowed for. Hon. Members could "buy in" the years during which they have represented their constituencies in the House.
I should not like to say, without consideration, what view would be taken of an hon. Member who had not previously been a teacher, and who had lost his seat and decided to become a teacher, but I think his experience in the House would be extremely valuable in handling oversized classes.

Mr. M. Stewart: I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree that if such a person had during his service in the House been Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Education it could hardly be maintained that his service was not of value to him as a teacher, and that if it were conceded in such a case, it would be impossible to distinguish between one hon. Member and another in such a respect.

Sir D. Eccles: That is an interesting point, and we shall have to consider it when we make the Regulations.

Mr. Short: The right hon. Gentleman referred to the person who served as a Member of Parliament before entering teaching and hinted that his service might be considered of value. Would not the Clause exclude a teacher who left the profession to serve in the House for ten years and then returned to teaching?

Sir D. Eccles: Such a person is already covered and does not need this provision. There are other hon. Members opposite who are in that fortunate position.

Mr. G. Thomas: Surely they are "unfortunate" if they go back.

Sir D. Eccles: It depends upon the view that one takes of teaching. It is clear that throughout the proceedings on the Bill I have had a higher regard for the teaching profession than many hon. Gentlemen opposite have.

Mr. Short: I think the right hon. Gentleman misunderstood me. Is it not possible for the Minister to make Regulations to allow teachers to "buy in" their ten years' service in the House? When he says that they are already covered, surely he means only that they can return to teaching?

Sir D. Eccles: No.

Mr. Short: They are not covered in any other way, surely. If the right hon.

Gentleman means that there is something in the Clause which would enable them to "buy in" the ten years' service, perhaps he will tell us where it is.

Sir D. Eccles: I shall be glad to tell the hon. Member afterwards exactly what his own position is. He is able to do something about it. If he will speak to me afterwards I will tell him what he can do if he returns to teaching in Newcastle.
The hon. Member for Fulham asked what subsection (4) meant. I will give him an example. To qualify for a breakdown pension a teacher has to serve for ten years, and the subsection means that one cannot count towards the period of ten years a period of five years spent in industry before one entered the profession. There are one or two other examples, but that is the main one.
I was well aware what the main criticism of the Clause by hon. Gentlemen opposite would be. It is "Should we not go wider, and, in particular, recognise National Service?" The principle of not recognising National Service was very fully discussed during the proceedings on the Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1948. At that time many representations were made to the Labour Government by various bodies of public servants that they ought to be allowed to count National Service. They were turned down by the Labour Government—rightly, I think, although the balance of argument is quite fine—mainly upon the ground that it was not right to give compensation for having done National Service to young men who went into one profession and not to those who went into another. I think that that must have been the main principle behind the decision.
6.30 p.m.
It is very difficult to see how this proposal could be worked fairly. How could we really say that experience in National Service is an aid to recruitment? I think that we must stick to that criterion if we are to have any limit at all to what is meant by "previous service of value.'' How could we say that National Service is of greater value than a dozen other forms of previous experience? The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) quite rightly said that it did not really matter what kind of service the new entrants


had done before, whether National Service or any other kind of service, so long as it was clearly, in the hon. Member's estimation, of value for the profession of teaching. That is just the difficulty; I do not see where we could stop.

Mr. Ross: What I was trying to point out was that the Government were applying two different criteria; in one case there was the criterion of usefulness and in the other case, in relation to National Service, the criterion of a previous application to a training college. I was pointing out that it was wrong to apply these two different standards.

Sir D. Eccles: I agree that two quite separate points are involved there. At the moment. I am considering not those cases hanging over from the last war, but the question whether we could define "previous service of value" without relating it strictly to certain types of teaching in respect of which we are now short of staff. I do not think that we can. Moreover, I do not think that it would be fair to apply the rule only to new entrants; indeed, in the case of technical college teachers who already have experience, it is my present intention to apply it, although I have not discussed the rules with the teachers. I do not think that we can say to a man coming over from industry to teach engineering, at the end of this year, "You can 'buy in' five years," while saying to someone with the same experience who joined the same staff six months before, "You cannot buy in '." So this is an enormous problem. If we were to make this concession in respect of National Service men we should have to make it for all those now in the teaching profession who had done their National Service, and, I think any other public service.
That brings me to the question of cost. It makes all the difference in the world whether the employer has to pay 24 per cent.—two years at 12 per cent.—or not. If he had to do so the cost would be very great, and I could not possibly estimate it now. Under our Clause, however, if the Government did include National Service, the young man himself would have to find the contributions, and it might be thought that in those circumstances the Exchequer would not have a very large stake in the matter. I rather wish that that were the case, but I am

afraid it is not so. The fact is that although the amount which a man paid up might be sufficient to meet the liabilities on the fund whilst the contribution was 6 per cent. on both sides, as soon as another salary increase was granted, up would go the benefits, and a deficiency would once again begin to appear on the account. That is the contingency for which we have provided in Clause 4.
One has only to appreciate the size of the deficiency which has to be wiped out under Clause 1 to see what a very considerable gap there is between the cost of the benefits of teachers now in service and what they have paid in up till now, together with the subscriptions of their employers. The result of that gap is precisely the very large deficiency which is the reason for the Bill. It would not be right, therefore, to say that the cost of making this concession in respect of National Service would be negligible, even if the young ex-National Service man paid up the whole 24 per cent. himself.
The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydvil (Mr. S. O. Davies) and the hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. W. T. Williams) gave two examples of soldiers who, while carrying out their period of National Service, had patently done some training which would help them when they became teachers. I would only say that they were lucky; there were a great many others who did not have those opportunities. I do not believe that we could found a policy simply upon the members of the Educational Corps. If we attempted to do so I believe that quite a lot would be said by people who were not in the Educational Corps.
Although I fully subscribe to the view that, in many cases, the experience of a National Service man must be of help to him when he becomes a teacher, I must point out that the same could be said of any of the other occupations from which he might come. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock said that we should not penalise patriotism; but neither should we offer a bribe for it. We should not offer compensation for having done National Service to only one section of National Service men.

Mr. S. O. Davies: Is not the right hon. Gentleman overlooking something which is fundamental in the life of the National


Service man? He is compulsorily uprooted from his work and his associations, and, it may be, from his studies. He does not choose to be called up. He is disturbed in probably the most formative years of his life. Surely we cannot generalise from the particular case of the young man who enters the teaching profession after completing his period of National Service. The right hon. Gentleman is overlooking something which is fundamental in a young man's life.

Sir D. Eccles: I think that there is a misunderstanding between the hon. Member and me. I realise that these young people are uprooted from their homes, and that many of them have to go many miles overseas, but I do not think that it is fair to offer those who subsequently enter the public service, and indeed only one branch of it, a form of compensation which is not offered to the others. That was precisely the point upon which the Labour Government insisted in 1948. We have had all these discussions before.

Dr. King: The Government allow exactly the compensation about which the right hon. Gentleman is complaining in the case of every civil servant and every local government officer, whose period of National Service is regarded as an interruption of service.

Sir D. Eccles: That, of course, is so. Where National Service is an interruption, it has long been a principle that it can be included, but with the professional grades of the Civil Service—

Mr. Cove: Why not put it back?

Sir D. Eccles: That is a point to be argued. It is exactly the point that was argued before the Labour Government came down on the side of not singling out those who were going into the professional grades of the Civil Service and allowing them a form of compensation. I do not like to use comparisons, but I must recall that the teachers often say to me that they want professional status. People with professional status in the public service suffer the same disadvantages as teachers because, by and large, they do their National Service before they enter the public service. It is a disadvantage shared by all the professional ranks.

Mr. M. Stewart: Surely the right hon. Gentleman's comparisons with 1948 are

invalidated by the fact that there was then no enactment involving this principle of employment of value to the teacher. We are discussing the matter now in quite a different context. We have agreed to the principle of allowing employment of value to the teacher to be brought in, and in that context we have to discuss whether National Service can in any circumstances be regarded as employment of value to the teacher.
The right hon. Gentleman is introducing a new Clause which, at any rate theoretically, would allow him to regard the fact that a man had been the father of seven children as employment of value in the teaching profession, but would not allow him—explicitly forbids him—to regard any form of National Service as employment of value. That is a quite different situation from that of 1948.

Sir D. Eccles: It might be said that I should have left this subsection out of the Bill and at the end simply drawn up the rules so as to provide that National Service was excluded by the Regulations. There has been so much public discussion on the point and so many people have been talking about it that I thought was better to come clean. If we are not going to use a power it is better not to take it in the Bill. That is how see legislation.

Mr. Ede: Could not the right hon. Gentleman go a little further than that? By putting in subsection (5) he admits that, but for the subsection, this matter could be excluded. The right hon. Gentleman is specifically taking away from himself the power to do a good deed.

Sir D. Eccles: Quite deliberately. It is so difficult a case in the minds of so many people that it is better that they should know exactly where the Government stand. It would have been perhaps more cunning to have left out subsection (5). I think it cleaner to put it in. No doubt the Committee will feel it desirable to vote on the matter in a moment or two.
We want the Clause as an aid to getting teachers with industrial, scientific and technical experience for particular jobs where they are very short today. I think hon. Members will agree that we ought to do everything we can to man-up these technical colleges and science courses, and this provision may help a little. That is


why I have put the subsection down in this form. I understand the argument for bringing in the National Service men but I can only tell the Committee that the Government feel that the case is not made out.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendments made: In page 24, line 39, at the end insert:
(iv) as a teacher in any school maintained within the United Kingdom by the Government of any part of Her Majesty's Dominions outside the United Kingdom; or."—[Mr. Henderson Stewart.]

In page 25, line 12, at the end, insert:
(11) for enabling the Secretary of State on the application of a teacher who entered service after gaining experience which, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, is or is likely to be of value to him as a teacher, to approve the said experience and to intimate to the teacher the period not exceeding five years, which in respect of the said experience may be deemed a period of service; the purposes for which and the conditions (including payment of additional contributions) on which the said service may be recorded and, if the teacher intimates his agreement and undertakes to fulfil the said conditions, for the said period to be deemed a period of service and to be recorded accordingly, and for such consequential and other matters as may appear to the Secretary of State to be necessary for the carrying out of this paragraph:
Provided that a period during which the teacher was undergoing whole-time education or whole-time training for the teaching profession or apprenticeship to a profession or trade or was engaged in service by virtue of an enlistment notice or a training notice served under Part I of the National Service Act, 1948, or any work or training in pursuance of an order made or direction given under the said Part I in respect of a conditionally registered conscientious objector shall not he so approved.—[Mr. Henderson Stewart.]

Dr. King: On a point of order. Are we not to put in the manuscript Amendment which has been submitted?

The Temporary Chairman (Major Anstruther-Gray): We have not yet reached the manuscript Amendment to which the hon. Gentleman refers.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Orders of the Day — Clause 30.—(AMENDMENT OF PART II OF THE THIRD SCHEDULE TO THE ACT OF 1946.)

Amendment made: In page 25, line 31, leave out from "provisions" to "for" in line 40, and insert:
in so far as they relate to pensions for widows, widowers and children, irrespective of

election, to male teachers or to both male and female teachers who enter service or second class service on or after such date as may be prescribed, and to such male and female teachers to whom such provisions so relating do not apply as may elect that such provisions so relating shall apply to them or as do not elect that such provisions shall not apply to them; for the application of such provisions in so far as they relate to pensions for dependants to such male and female teachers as may elect that such provisions so relating shall apply to them or as do not elect that such provisions shall not apply to them."—[Mr. Henderson Stewart.]

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Orders of the Day — NEW Clause.—(INTERVALS OF PAYMENTS OF ANNUITIES AND ALLOWANCES.)

Subsection (1) of section nine of the Elementary School Teachers (Superannuation) Act, 1898 (which provides that annuities and allowances under that Act shall be payable quarterly at such times and in such manner as the Treasury may fix), section seven of the School Teachers (Superannuation) Act, 1918 (which provides that annual superannuation allowances shall be payable quarterly as aforesaid) and the said section seven as incorporated in the First Schedule to the principal Act shall have effect as if the word "quarterly" were omitted.—[Sir D. Eccles.]

Brought up and read the First time.

6.45 p.m.

Sir D. Eccles: I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
The Committee will remember that on the Second Reading my hon. Friend and I both said that we would do our best to arrange that teachers' pensions should be paid monthly and not quarterly. The difficulty was that the Paymaster-General's office was overworked and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer could not see how to do it. Now it is to be possible, but not at once. It will require extra staff as it means six or seven hundred thousand extra payments a year.
This change was asked for from all quarters of the Committee, and I think it will be of service to many teachers. We will do it as soon as we can, but I am told that April of next year is likely to be the first date on which it can be done. The method by which we are doing it is to leave out of the old Act the reference to "quarterly," which then leaves it to the Minister to decide at what periods the pension shall be paid. I give the Committee the assurance that it will be monthly.

Dr. King: In view of the fact that we shall have very little that is kind to say to the Minister during the rest of the evening, I should like, as a back bencher, to thank him for his new Clause. The change will be a real boon to a majority of the pensioners who have found it very difficult in the past.

Mr. K. Thompson: I should like to say, in echoing the sentiments of the hon. Member for Itchen (Dr. King), that there has been for a long time a need for precisely this new Clause and that a great many teachers will benefit as a result of it. I take this opportunity of congratulating my right hon. Friend on introducing it.

Mr. M. Stewart: I feel that I ought not to lose what may be the last opportunity, as my hon. Friend the Member for Itchen (Dr. King) suggested, of saying a kind word to the Minister. I combine with it a word of congratulation to the hon. Member for Walton (Mr. K. Thompson), who has just spoken. One swallow does not make a summer, but possibly there will be further contributions from the Government back benchers as the debate goes on.
I say seriously that not only we but many people will have cause to be grateful to the Minister for finding that the difficulties which seemed to surround this question could be overcome. On one occasion I taught for a short time in a school which was outside the State system of education. I remember while on the staff there that a revolutionary suggestion was made by some of the younger members that our salaries should be paid monthly instead of quarterly. The view was taken by some of the senior members that if this were done it would lower our social status. The kind of social status, however, which arises from receiving ones income, whether salary or pension, at inconveniently prolonged intervals is the kind of social status which fortunately most people are too sensible to want. For a number of pensioners this will be a real and valuable concession, and we record our gratitude and pleasure at it.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

Orders of the Day — New Clause.—(RE-EMPLOYMENT OF TEACHERS IN CONTRIBUTORY SERVICE.)

(1) If a teacher to whom an annual superannuation allowance has been granted is employed after the commencement of this Act in contributory service, or in employment which would, if he were less than seventy years of age, be contributory service, then—

(a) in respect of any period of that employment for which the teacher is entitled to a salary at a rate less than that of the salary at which he was last employed in contributory service before the grant of the allowance, so much only of the allowance shall be paid to him as, with the salary to which he is entitled, is equal to the rate of the salary at which he was last employed as aforesaid; and
(b) in respect of any period of that employment for which the teacher is entitled to a salary at a rate not less than that of the salary at which he was last employed as aforesaid, the allowance shall be suspended.

(2) If the Minister is of opinion that it would be inequitable for a teacher's superannuation allowance to be reduced or suspended in accordance with the provisions of the foregoing subsection, he may, to such extent as he thinks just, disregard for the purposes of that subsection any salary to which the teacher has become entitled in respect of any such employment as is therein mentioned.

(3) In relation to a teacher who has made an election under section ten of this Act, subsection (1) of this section shall apply to so much only of his annual allowance as would have been payable apart from the election.

(4) Subsection (1) of section six of the principal Act (which provides for the cessation of the annual allowances of teachers reemployed in contributory service) is hereby repealed; and notwithstanding anything in section thirty-eight of the Interpretation Act, 1889 (which relates to the effect of repeals), any allowance which, apart from the said subsection (I), would have been payable to a teacher employed as therein mentioned immediately before the commencement of this Act shall, subject to the foregoing provisions of this section, be revived as from the commencement of this Act.—[Mr. Vosper.]

Brought up and read the First time.

Mr. Vosper: I beg to move, That the Clause he read a Second time.
This Clause was foreshadowed in Committee and is responsible, I am afraid, for many of the consequential Amendments which appear on the Order Paper in relation to other Clauses. It repeals Section 6 (1) of the 1925 Act under which a teacher's pension ceases entirely when he returns to full-time service, even if he did so at a lower salary than he formerly received. Subsection (1) of the Clause now allows him to draw a pension


which will bring his new salary up to what he formerly enjoyed. Subsection (2), which may need a word of explanation, allows my right hon. Friend a certain amount of discretion. If, for example, a teacher up till just before retiring was enjoying a special allowance which actually ceased before his retirement, he would on re-employment, under this subsection, at my right hon. Friend's discretion, be allowed to draw so much of his pension as would make his salary on re-employment up to his previous salary including the special allowance. Subsection (3) simply says that if a teacher allocates his lump sum for an increased pension under Section 10 of the Act, it shall, of course, continue whatever his new salary may be. Subsection (4) deals with the repeal of Section 6 of the original Act, and also brings into this Clause those teachers who are at present re-employed. They will benefit from this Clause as from the date when this Bill comes into force as an Act.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

Orders of the Day — New Clause.—(RETURN OF CONTRIBUTIONS.)

(1) If a teacher to whom an annual allowance, additional allowance or short service gratuity has been granted, is employed in contributory service for any period after the commencement of this Act, but is not qualified by virtue of his service during that period for a subsequent annual allowance at a rate exceeding that of the annual allowance previously granted, or for any further sum by way of additional allowance or short service gratuity, he or his legal personal representatives shall be entitled on his ceasing to be so employed to be repaid a sum equal to the contributions paid by him in respect of that period.

(2) Any period in respect of which contributions have been repaid to a teacher under this section shall be excluded in reckoning his periods of contributory service unless the teacher is again employed in contributory service and, while so employed, repays a sum equal to the contributions so repaid to him.—[Mr. Vosper]

Brought up and read the First time.

Mr. Vosper: I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
This Clause deals with the return of contributions. It is a fairly simple point. When a teacher is re-employed he has to be employed for twelve months before he can qualify for further allowances.

During this period he pays contributions. Hitherto if he has not completed twelve months he has lost these contributions. This Clause provides that if he does not complete the twelve months he will be entitled to a refund of the contribution he has paid. It brings this category of teachers into line with the improvement made by granting a part year for other categories of teachers.
Subsection (2) provides for those teachers who do not complete their twelve months but later return for a second period of re-employment. If over the second periods they can count twelve months, the teacher is able to refund to my right hon. Friend the refund he has already received and thus qualify for the twelve months' period. This Clause will be welcomed on both sides of the Committee and by the teachers.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

Orders of the Day — New Clause.—(FURTHER PROVISIONS AS TO SERVICE OF VALUE TO TEACHERS.)

(I) If the Minister is satisfied, on application made to him within such time and in such manner as may be prescribed by rules under this section by a teacher employed in contributory service—

(a) that the teacher, when first so employed, was between such ages as may be so prescribed; and
(b) that before he was first so employed the teacher was engaged in other employment providing experience of value to him as a teacher, the Minister may direct that, subject to the payment by the teacher of additional contributions in accordance with this section, any period of that other employment, not exceeding five years, shall be treated for the purpose of calculating the amount of any allowance or gratuity payable to or in respect of the teacher under the principal Act as if it were a period of contributory service.

(2) The additional contributions to be paid by a teacher in respect of whom directions are given under this section shall be of such amount, and shall be payable at such times and in such manner, as may be prescribed by rules under this section; and the amount so prescribed in relation to teachers of any class shall be such as appears to the Minister, according to tables to be prepared from time to time by the Government Actuary, to be sufficient to support the increase attributable to this section in the amount of any allowances or gratuities payable to them under the principal Act.

(3) The Minister may, with the consent of the Treasury, make rules for prescribing anything to be prescribed by rules under this


section; and such rules may apply in relation to the additional contributions payable under this section any provisions of the principal Act or of rules made thereunder with respect to contributions payable by teachers under that Act (including provisions with respect to the return of contributions to teachers who do not qualify for allowances or gratuities) subject to such modifications as may be prescribed by the rules.

(4) Nothing in this section shall be construed as authorising any period of employment to be treated as a period of contributory service for the purpose of determining whether a teacher is qualified for the grant of an allowance or gratuity under the principal Act.

(5) For the purposes of paragraph (b) of subsection (1) of this section the expression "employment" does not include service undertaken by virtue of an enlistment notice or a training notice served under Pant 1 of the National Service Act, 1948, or work or training in pursuance of an order made or

Division No. 129.]
AYES
[6.56 p.m.


Agnew, Cmdr. P. G.
Duthie, W. S.
Hutchison, Eir Ian Clark(E'b'gh, W.)


Aitken, W. T.
Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir David
Hutchison, Sir James (Scotstoun)


Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)
Eden, J. B. (Bournemouth, West)
Hylton-Foster, Sir H. B. H.


Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)
Elliot, Rt. Hon. W. E.
Iremonger, T. L.


Armstrong, C. W.
Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn
Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)


Ashton, H.
Farey-Jones, F. W.
Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)


Atkins, H. E.
Fell, A.
Jennings, Sir Roland (Hallam)


Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M.
Finlay, Graeme
Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)


Baldwin, A. E.
Fisher, Nigel
Johnson, Eric (Blackley)


Balniel, Lord
Fleetwood-Hesketh, R. F.
Johnson, Howard (Kemptown)


Barber, Anthony
Fletcher-Cooke, C.
Joseph, Sir Keith


Barlow, Sir John
Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)
Kaberry, D.


Barter, John
Fraser, Sir Ian (M'cmbe &amp; Lonsdale)
Keegan, D.


Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)
Freeth, D. K.
Kerby, Capt. H. B.


Bennett, Dr. Reginald
Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.
Kerr, H. W.


Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)
Garner-Evans, E. H.
Kershaw, J. A.


Bidgood, J. C.
George, J. C. (Pollok)
Kirk, P. M.


Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel
Gibson-Watt, D.
Lagden, G. W.


Bishop, F. P.
Glover, D.
Lambert, Hon. G.


Black, C. W.
Godber, J. B.
Lambton, Viscount


Body, R. F.
Gomme-Duncan, Col. Sir Alan
Lancaster, Col. C. G.


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J. A.
Cough, C. F. H.
Langford-Holt, J. A.


Boyle, Sir Edward
Gower, H. R.
Leavey, J. A.


Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)
Graham, Sir Fergus
Leburn, W. G.


Browne, J. Nixon (Craigton)
Grant, W. (Woodside)
Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.


Bryan, P.
Grant-Ferris, Wg Cdr. R. (Nantwich)
Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)


Buchan-Hepburn, Rt. Hon. P. C. T.
Green, A.
Lindsay, Hon. James (Devon, N.)


Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.
Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)
Lindsay, Martin (Solihull)


Burden, F. F. A.
Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)
Linstead, Sir H. N.


Butcher, Sir Herbert
Grosvenor, Lt.-Col. R. G.
Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)


Butler, Rt.Hn. R.A.(Saffron Walden)
Gurden, Harold
Lloyd-George, Maj. Rt. Hon. G.


Campbell, Sir David
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)
Lucas, P. B.(Brentford &amp; Chiswick)


Cary, Sir Robert
Harrison, A. B. E. (Maldon)
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh


Channon, H.
Harvey, Air Cdre. A. V. (Macclesfd)
McAdden, S. J.


Chichester-Clark, R.
Harvey, Ian (Harrow, E.)
Macdonald, Sir Peter


Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)
Harvie-Watt, Sir George
Mackie, J. H. (Galloway)


Cooper-Key, E. M.
Hay, John
McLaughlin, Mrs. P.


Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.
Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel
Maclay, Rt. Hon. John


Corfield, Capt. F. V.
Heath, Rt. Hon. E. R. G.
Maclean, Fitzroy (Lancaster)


Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)
Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.
MacLeod, John (Ross &amp; Cromarty)


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Hill, Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)
Maddan, Martin


Crouch, R. F.
Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)
Maitland, Cdr. J.F.W.(Horncastle)


Crowder, Petre (Ruislip—Northwood)
Hill, John (S. Norfolk)
Maitland, Hon. Patrick (Lanark)


Cunningham, Knox
Hirst, Geoffrey
Markham, Major Sir Frank


Currie, G. B. H.
Holland-Martin, C. J.
Marples, A. E.


Dance, J. C. G.
Hope, Lord John
Mathew, R.


D'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.
Mawby, R. L.


Deedes, W. F.
Horobin, Sir Ian
Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.


Digby, Simon Wingfield
Horsbrugh, Rt. Hon. Dame Florence
Medlicott, Sir Frank


Dodds-Parker, A. D.
Howard, Hon. Greville (St. Ives)
Molson, A. H. E.


Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.
Howard, John (Test)
Moore, Sir Thomas


Drayson, G. B.
Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)
Nabarro, G. D. N,


du Cann, E. D. L.
Hughes, Hallett, Vice-Admiral J.
Nairn, D. L. S.


Dugdale, Rt. Hn. Sir T. (Richmond)
Hughes-Young, M. H. c.
Neave, Airey


Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.
Hulbert, Sir Norman
Nicholls, Harmar

direction given under the said Part I in respect of a conditionally registered conscientious objector.—[Sir D. Eccles.]

Brought up and read the Second time.

Mr. M. Stewart: I beg to move, as an Amendment to the proposed Clause, to leave out subsection (5).
This is a manuscript Amendment of which I have given you notice, Sir Charles, and which in substance the Committee has already had an opportunity of discussing.

Question put, That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the proposed Clause:—

The Committee divided: Noes 203.

Nicholson, Godfrey (Farnham)
Ridsdale, J. E.
Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)


Nicolson, N. (B'n'm'th, E. &amp; Chr'ch)
Rippon, A. G. F.
Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)


Nield, Basil (Chester)
Roberts, Sir Peer (Healey)
Tiley, A. (Bradford, W.)


Nugent, G. R. H.
Robertson, Sir David
Touche, Sir Cordon


Oakshott, H. D.
Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)
Turner, H. F. L.


O'Neill, Hn. Phelim (Co. Antrim, N.)
Robson-Brown, W.
Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.


Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)
Vane, W. M. F


Orr-Ewing, Charles Ian (Hendon, N.)
Roper, Sir Harold
Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.


Osborne, C.
Russell, R. S.
Vosper, D. F.


Page, R. G.
Sandys, Rt. Hon. D.
Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)


Pannell, N. A. (Kirkdale)
Schofield, Lt.-Col. W.
Walker-Smith, D. C.


Partridge, E.
Scott-Miller, Cmdr. R.
Wall, Major Patrick


Peyton, J. W. W.
Sharples, R. C.
Ward, Hon. George (Worcester)


Pilkington, Capt. R. A.
Shepherd, William
Ward, Dame Irene (Tynemouth)


Pitman, I. J.
Smithers, Peter (Winchester)
Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.


Pitt, Miss E. M.
Soames, Capt. C.
Webbe, Sir H.


Pott, H. P.
Spearman, A. C. M.
Whitelaw, W.S.I.(Penrith &amp; Border)


Powell, J. Enoch
Stanley, Capt. Hon. Richard
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Price, David (Eastleigh)
Stevens, Geoffrey
Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)


Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)
Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)
Wills, G. (Bridgwater)


Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.
Steward, Sir William (Woolwich, W.)
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Raikes, Sir Victor
Stewart, Henderson (Fife, E.)
Wood, Hon. R.


Ramsden, J. E.
Stoddart-Scott, Col. M.
Woollam, John Victor


Rawlinson, Peter
Studholme, H. G.
Yates, William (The Wrekin)


Redmayne, M.
Summers, G. S. (Aylesbury)



Rees-Davies, W. R.
Sumner, W. D. M. (Orpington)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Remnant, Hon. P.
Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)
Mr. R. Thompson and


Renton, D. L. M.
Teeling, W.
Colonel J. H. Harrison.




NOES


Ainsley, J. W.
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
Lever, Leslie (Ardwick)


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)
Lewis, Arthur


Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)
Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Lipton, Lt.-Col. M.


Anderson, Frank
Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson


Awbery, S. S.
Fernyhough, E.
MacColl, J. E.


Bacon, Miss Alice
Fienburgh, W.
McGhee, H. G.


Bartley, P.
Finch, H. J.
McInnes, J.


Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.
Fletcher, Eric
McKay, John (Wallsend)


Bence, C. R. (Dunbartonshire, E.)
Forman, J. C.
McLeavy, Frank


Benn, Hn. Wedgwood (Bristol, S.E.)
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
MacMillan, M. K. (Western Isles)


Benson, G.
Gibson, C. W.
Mahon, Simon


Beswick, F.
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.
Mainwaring, W. H.


Bevan, Rt. Hon. A. (Ebbw Vale)
Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.
Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)


Blenkinsop, A.
Grey, C. F.
Mallalieu, J.P.W.(Huddersfd, E.)


Blyton, W. R.
Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)
Mann, Mrs. Jean


Boardman, H.
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.


Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.
Grimond, J.
Mason, Roy


Bowden, H. W. (Leicester, S.W.)
Hale, Leslie
Mayhew, C. P.


Bowen, E. R. (Cardigan)
Hall, Rt. Hn. Glenvil (Colne Valley)
Mellish, R. J.


Bowles, F. G.
Hannan, W.
Messer, Sir F.


Boyd, T. C.
Harrison, J. (Nottingham, N.)
Mikardo, Ian


Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth
Hastings, S.
Mitchison, C. R.


Brockway, A. F.
Hayman, F. H.
Monslow, W.


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Henderson, Rt. Hn. A. (Rwly Regis)
Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)


Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)
Herbison, Miss M.
Mort, D. L.


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Hewitson, Capt. M.
Moss, R.


Burke, W. A.
Hobson, C. R.
Moyle, A.


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Holman, P.
Mulley, F. W.


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Holmes, Horace
Neal, Harold (Bolsover)


Callaghan, L. J.
Howell, Charles (Perry Barr)
Oliver, G. H.


Carmichael, J.
Howell, Denis (All Saints)
Oram, A. E.


Castle, Mrs. B. A.
Hoy, J. H.
Orbach, M.


Chapman, W. D.
Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Oswald, T.


Chetwynd, G. R.
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Owen, W. J,


Clunie, J.
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)
Padley, W. E.


Collick, P. H. (Birkenhead)
Hunter, A. E.
Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)


Collins, V.J. (Shoreditch &amp; Finsbury)
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Paling, Will T. (Dewsbury)


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)


Cove, W. G.
Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.
Parker, J.


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Janner, B.
Parkin, B. T.


Cronin, J. D.
Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.
Paton, J.


Crossman, R. H. S.
Jeger, Mrs.Lena (Holbn &amp; St.Pncs.S.)
Pearson, A.


Cullen, Mrs. A.
Johnson, James (Rugby)
Peart T. F.


Daines, P.
Jones, David (The Hartlepools)
Prior, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Darling, George (Hillsborough)
Jones, Jack (Rotherham)
Probert, A. R.


Davies, Ernest (Enfield, E.)
Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Proctor, W. T.


Davies, Stephen (Merthyr)
Jones. T. W. (Merioneth)
Randall, H. E.


Deer, G.
Kenyon, C.
Rankin, John


Delargy, H. J.
Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Reeves, J.


Dodds, N. N.
King, Dr. H. M.
Rhodes, H.


Dye, S.
Lawson, G. M.
Robens, Rt. Hon. A.


Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.
Lee, Frederick (Newton)
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)







Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)
Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.
Willey, Frederick


Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)
Swingler, S. T.
Williams, David (Neath)


Ross, William
Sylvester, G. O.
Williams, Rt. Hon. T. (Don Valley)


Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


Silverman, Julius (Aston)
Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)
Williams, W. T. (Barons Court)


Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)
Thornton, E.
Willis, Eustace (Edinburgh, E.)


Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)
Timmons, J.
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Skeffington, A. M.
Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn
Winterbottom, Richard


Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke, N.)
Usborne, H. C.
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Slater, J. (Sedgefield)
Viant, S. P.
Woof, R. E.


Sorensen, R. W.
Warbey, W. N.
Younger, Rt. Hon. K.


Sparks, J. A.
Wells, Percy (Faversham)
Zilliacus, K.


Steele, T.
Wheeldon, W. E.



Stewart, Michael (Fulham)
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Strauss, Rt. Hon. George (Vauxhall)
White, Henry (Derbyshire, N.E.)
Mr. Short and Mr. J. Taylor.


Stross, Dr. Barnett(Stoke-on-Trent, C.)
Wilkins, W. A.

Clause added to the Bill.

Bill reported, with Amendments; as amended (in Standing Committee D and in the Scottish Standing Committee and on re-committal), considered.

Orders of the Day — New Clause.—(DISMISSAL OF I EACHER WITH FORTY-FIVE YEARS' SERVICE.)

The provisions of section eighty-one of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1946), hereinafter referred to as the "Act of 1946"), in so far as they relate to the dismissal of certificated teachers shall not apply to a teacher who has completed forty-five years of service or of service and second class service.—[Mr. Henderson Stewart.]

Brought up and read the First time.

7.0 p.m.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew): I think that the House can consider, with this new Clause, the Amendment in page 16, line 3, to leave out Clause 23 and that to Clause 30, in page 25, line 18, after "3A," to insert:
where any teacher holds a post of special responsibility within the meaning of the regulations for the time being in force made by the Secretary of State under section seventy-nine of the Act of 1946 (which relates to the salaries of teachers) and will not, on completion of forty-five years of service or of service and second class service, have attained the age for retirement prescribed under the last foregoing paragraph, for the teacher to be deemed to have offered to resign from the said post on the day on which he completes the said forty-five years, and for the retirement of the teacher from the said post on the said day if his resignation is accepted, so, however, that nothing in any provision included in the scheme under this paragraph shall prevent he employer from offering and the teacher from accepting appointment to another host;

Mr. Henderson Stewart: The hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) said a few moments ago that he thought he had better say some nice words to the Minister then because he would not have any more nice ones to

say later on. I hope, however, that we may hear some pleasant expressions on this group of Amendments, because, in fact, they are intended to meet proposals put to us by the Opposition in the Scottish Grand Committee.
Clause 23—which was, of course, formerly Clause 22—was debated at the first sitting of the Scottish Committee. An Amendment was then put down in the name of the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) who wanted to add to the main Clause a new subsection:
(2) Any teacher who has attained the age of 65 years shall not thereafter hold a promoted post.
The debate on that Amendment ranged over a considerable field, and indeed over the whole subject of the employment of teachers aged over 65 years, and the effect of the "Mundella Act"—as we call it in Scotland. I undertook to look at the matter again, upon which the Amendment was withdrawn. The Motion that the Clause should stand part of the Bill was, however, carried. I have looked at the matter again, as I promised, and I have now to make a proposition which, though it may not go absolutely all the way to meet the Opposition, does, I claim, go a considerable way.
The changes proposed in the new Clause—which replaces Clause 23—and in the Amendment to Clause 30 are as follows. First, by the new Clause, all teachers will now have the full protection of Section 81 against dismissal until they have completed the maximum period of service which can count for pension, namely 45 years, or until they reach the compulsory retiring age of 70, whichever comes first. Thereafter, no teacher will have that protection.
Secondly, by the Amendment to Clause 30, any teacher in a post of special responsibility will be deemed to have offered his resignation from the post on


completion of 45 years' service, and it will be open to the education authority to accept it or to ask the teacher to continue in the post he was occupying. If the educational authority accepts the resignation it may, of course, offer the teacher another post.
I will explain those two changes in a few words. The first change is based on a proposal made to us by the hon. Member for Govan (Mr. Rankin), whom I am sorry not to see in his place, and can be defended because it fixes upon a logical point in a teacher's career at which to end protection against dismissal. The teacher is given the opportunity of earning his maximum pension. I think there is no logical reason for withdrawing the protection at 65 now that the maximum age has been raised to 70. That was the point made by the hon. Member, and I think it is a good one. As hon. Members know, the choice lies between the age of 60, when a teacher may retire if he wishes and draw his pension, and, secondly, on completion of 45 years' service when he has earned his maximum pension, and the age of 70. when he must retire unless he gets special permission from the Secretary of State to continue.
That is the first change. The second one puts posts of special responsibility at the disposal of the education authority when the teacher in the post has completed 45 years. I am speaking from memory, but I think I am right in saying that that was the point particularly in the mind of the right hon. Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn). The local authority association and the Educational Institute of Scotland wanted that to happen when the teacher attained the age of 65. In both cases the reason was, of course, to avoid blocking promotion. One quite understands that, but the authorities also did not wish to be saddled with teachers in such posts who in their opinion were past their best.
The view of the Government is that teachers who are willing to continue in their posts beyond the age of 65 and are efficient should be allowed to do so. The new Clause and the Amendments together provide, I think, a workable and logical scheme, which is a reasonable compromise between the various and somewhat conflicting views which have been put, on the one hand, by teachers, and, on the other hand, by authorities,

and then by hon. Members in the Scottish Grand Committee. I hope, having gone a very considerable distance to meet to a large extent the requests put to us, that the House will feel disposed to accept the new Clause and the Amendments.

Miss Herbison: The Joint Under-Secretary said that the new Clause and the two Amendments, although they do not go the whole way, go a considerable way towards meeting us. I am not at all certain that they go very far at all to meet the points put particularly by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) in the Standing Committee.
The sum and substance of the new Clause and the Amendments in effect mean that a man can stay in his promoted post until he is 70 years of age. Earlier, in a debate on another Amendment, it was pointed out that when one took into consideration the two years of National Service which is compulsorily imposed on men teachers, some of them would be 70 and some may be 71 before they have completed 45 years service. The Joint Under-Secretary said that one of the provisions which we would get from this Clause and the two Amendments would be that those teachers who wished to work beyond the age of 65 and were efficient, would be able to do so. By these Amendments and the new Clause the man has the full protection of the Mundella Act—whether he is efficient or not. It is on that ground that I criticise the decisions which have been reached by the Government.
7.15 p.m.
I criticise them on a further ground. During the Committee stage we asked very strongly indeed that no man or woman should hold a promoted post after the age of 65. We did that for two reasons. The first was that we felt if we were to attract to this profession men and women of the best calibre it was important that they should know that their chances of promotion were fairly good. If almost every teacher may stay in a promoted post until he or she is 70 years of age, the chances of promotion will become fewer than they are at present. That is the first reason why, although this proposal goes a little way to meet us—a very little way—I criticise the proposals which the Government have brought before us today.
The second reason is that, although at present a man or woman may teach beyond what is considered the normal retiring age, the local authority takes it for granted that he or she has retired and these posts of promotion become vacant. If the man or woman continues to teach he or she will be in charge of a class—in a primary school, unfortunately, it may be one of more than fifty pupils and, in a secondary school, a class possibly of between thirty and forty pupils. If that man or woman has really passed his or her best as a teacher, the children who suffer will be those in that one class.
If the man or woman is left in a promoted position, as under these provisions, every child in the school will suffer, and there may be 800 or 900 children in the school. If the man or woman is head of a department there may be quite a few hundred children who will be adversely affected by the fact that these new provisions make it compulsory on the local authority to keep the man or woman in that promoted post.
We do not propose to vote against these proposals, because they have gone a very little way to meet us, but I ask the Joint Under-Secretary to consider what I have said and what I know one of my hon. Friends means to say on this matter, and to give some further thought to it. It is not only that we are making representations. In putting these views forward, the hon. Gentleman has met the wishes neither of the employees nor the employers. For those reasons, I ask him to consider the matter again and, perhaps in another place, meet much more fully the wishes of everybody connected with this profession in Scotland.

Mr. Ross: When we raised this matter during the Committee stage we were concerned with a balance of interests. I recognise the difficulty of doing all that would require to be done. At present it is the most difficult thing in the world to sack a teacher in Scotland before he reaches the age of 65 because they have protection, which is not available in England, under the Mundella Act. If we are to insist on teachers staying on and making the new age of retirement the normal age and that the teacher should get the normal protection up to that age, we have to recognise the effect of what

will happen when the teacher is so much older.
It may well be that with a view to protecting the child and the interests of education, a local authority might want to suggest to a teacher that he should retire without undergoing all the formalities. But then we must remember what will happen under the Bill, because to derive the maximum benefit from it the teacher must teach for 45 years. Therefore, to protect his benefits under the Bill, a man must teach until the age of 70.
Thirdly, the question must be balanced in relation to promoted posts, thinking not only of the man himself but of the other members of the profession who have looked forward to promotion at a certain age but who now find that, with the change that the Government are making, promotion is blocked for four or five years. All the difference that the second Amendment would make is that instead of the age being definitely 70, it might be a little lower. In many cases it is bound to be 70, because a man will probably have to teach until well beyond the age of 70 to get in his 45 years service for full pension rights. The whole position must be considered in the light of the difficulty of recruiting for the profession, and I hope that much more serious attention will be given to that aspect.
If the Government refer to the Report of the Royal Commission on Population, they will see that paragraph 645 states:
With further ageing, competition for promotion may be expected to increase, and a powerful sense of frustration may arise among the young. This would reinforce the demand for earlier retirement which on other grounds would be against the national interest. It is essential, however, to secure that experience in leadership should begin early, and that the community should get the full benefit of the diminishing supply of youth. Later retirement therefore should not apply to posts at the top.
That is important.
It may be possible to employ those retired as consultants or in positions of less responsibility.
It is sometimes difficult to apply that procedure. In areas where replacements are unobtainable, it may be impossible. For those reasons, the difficulty of the inflexible approach was recognised in Committee.
The Government have tried, although not very hard, to reach a conclusion. They must come to a decision on this


question. They have the Royal Commission Report behind them if they do so. In fact, they have the teachers of Scotland behind them, the young and the old, in trying to avoid frustration among the other members of the profession by the complete blocking of promotion. We must recognise that the Government have gone a little way, but they have not gone nearly far enough. I hope that they will further consider the point which has been made once again by my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison).

Mr. Ede: I understand that the Clause and the consequential Amendments apply only to Scotland. I hope I may have an assurance that in this matter we shall not have these complications added to the English education service.

Sir D. Eccles: indicated assent.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

Orders of the Day — Clause 1.—(WRITING-OFF OF ACCRUED DEFICIENCY OF CONTRIBUTIONS.)

Sir D. Eccles: I beg to move, in page 2, line 12, at the end to add:
(3) For the purpose of calculating the amount to be added as aforesaid, regard shall be had to any future increase in the scales of remuneration of teachers for which provision Is made by any order in force under section eighty-nine of the Education Act, 1944, on the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and fifty-six, or which has been approved by the Minister before that date in accordance with regulations made under section one hundred of that Act, but subject as aforesaid the scales of remuneration shall be taken to be those in force on that date.
The Clause, which relates to the calculation of the accumulated deficiency on the Account, is complicated. As part of the bargain that the Government made with the local authorities, we undertook to meet that deficiency entirely from the Exchequer. There then arose the question of how to calculate the deficiency. In the Bill, we started from the proposition that we would select 31st March of this year as the dividing line between the past and the future and that the accumulated deficiency as calculated by the Actuary at that date should fall entirely upon the Exchequer.
During those discussions, by "old deficiency" we meant the gap between the prospective income coming into the

account after 31st March next, together with the credit balance on the Account, and the known liabilities on the Account. We also knew that if the Burnham Report, which would come into effect on 1st April, 1957, resulted in an increase in teachers' salaries, and since teachers' pensions and benefits are calculated on the last years of their service, a new deficiency on the Account would arise. It was part of our settlement that the post-31st March deficiency, should one be revealed by the next actuarial valuation—which, under the terms of the Bill, will be five years from now—should be borne by the employers, that is, 40 per cent. by the ratepayers and 60 per cent. by the taxpayers.
At the time of those discussions, nobody assumed that in the calculation of the old deficiency, which was falling solely upon the Exchequer, the changes in the liabilities on the Account due to the next Burnham Report, then eighteen months ahead, would affect the calculation. There was never the slightest hint that anybody thought that was so. Indeed, one of the reasons why we advanced the great necessity for getting Clause 4 firmly into the Bill was that we said constantly that the next Burnham Report would within a very short time create a new deficiency and it was of the greatest importance to the teachers that they should be relieved of any responsibility for meeting the fresh deficiency that would arise when their salaries went up. That was the whole essence of the bargain whereby the employers undertook to meet the new deficiency and the employers said, as part of that bargain, that they must have 12 per cent. coming into the Account as from the date of operation of the Bill, and that they must have it equally divided.
We find that the practice of actuaries when they make a calculation of this kind is to take into consideration all the facts known to them while they are making their calculations, which may easily run for a year before they finally tell us the state of the Account on 31st March next. Their normal practice is to take in everything.
7.30 p.m.
I can give the House an example. They will, of course, take in the effects of equal pay; and the Amendment allows for the whole of the effects of equal pay, although


the women teachers are to get full equality with the men only by instalments. The whole of the effects of equal pay will be taken into the calculation of this deficiency, but as it was never part of our bargain that the next Burnham award should be brought into the calculation and we did not explicitly exclude that when we drafted Clause 1, I have to ask the House to make that change in the Bill.
I am quite clear in my own mind that nobody at the time ever expected the Exchequer to meet the "new" deficiency. We were in complete agreement on that. The changing of the date of the Bill, from 1st April next to 1st October, which we made in Committee, does not in any way harm the local authorities, because the actuary will know, when he makes his calculation, that as a result of changing the date of the Bill by six months the combined contributions coming into the account will be 10 per cent, and not 12 per cent. Therefore, he will have to add a sum to the deficiency which falls on the Exchequer in respect of lost contributions, of 2 per cent. over six months, which is the result of postponing the date of the Bill.
This means that our partners in the employment of teachers—the local authorities—are not damaged in any way by postponement of the Bill and, of course, we would have had to move this Amendment whether the Bill had been postponed or not. I have looked at the records of Standing Committee D and I see that as early as 20th December I gave an indication that I was going to ask the House to amend the Clause, because we very soon discovered that there was a faint possibility of an interim increase.
The Secretary of State for Scotland, of course, has given an interim increase to the Scottish teachers, but we have not. The matter has been put right already for the Scots, with exactly the same effect as that of my Amendment. That was done in Committee. All I am asking the House to do is to bring the English and Welsh calculations into line with what was done by the Scots, who in this matter had more foresight.

Dr. King: Those of us who tried to protect the local authorities from the Minister regret very much this final stage of what we attempted to fight against in Standing Committee. The Amendment

finalises the Government's liability and adds to the liability of the local authorities any actuarial liability which will arise from the new Burnham award when it is made. It is because of that, and because I believe that the Minister might have accepted this actuarial liability as part of the Government's share, that I regret very much that the right hon. Gentleman is writing this date into the Bill so that he transfers what I think ought to be his own liability to the local authorities who have a great deal to carry under the Bill.

Mr. K. Thompson: It is one of the fortunate circumstances of education in this country that it is worked in harmonious partnership between the Department of Education and the local authorities. At almost every stage there is consultation and discussion between the two partners to secure agreement and provide a basis upon which the education system can proceed. All the provisions of the Bill are evidence of the way in which these negotiations can be carried on between responsible partners in an operation to provide some means whereby the future can be harmonious and successful. All the original purposes of the Bill are the results of discussions which have gone on for a long time, the teachers' organisations expressing their quite clear but very specialist interest in what the Bill provides, and the Ministry and local authorities arguing as to who is to stand which part of the burden.
When the discussions originally took place, the Exchequer was to provide a sum of money into the fund to balance off the deficiency which would be shown by an actuarial calculation as on what the Minister has called the "dividing date"—before and after 31st March. In the discussions between my right hon. Friend and local authority representatives, that was clearly understood. I entirely concur with what my right hon. Friend has said. The 31st March, 1956, was the date upon which the division was to fall. Before that date, the burden was to be borne by the Exchequer and after that date by the local authorities. That agreement was reached in the light of all the circumstances which both parties could see at that time.
One of those circumstances was that there was going to be a new Burnham award, probably in April, 1957. One of the things which the parties could see was


that the actuary, in making his calculation, would behave as Government actuaries have been bred or certainly trained to behave. The parties could see that in making his calculation he would take into account all the factors known to him at the time. When the local authorities reached the agreement, which is sometimes referred to as the "package deal," they saw the new salary awards coming into effect in April, 1957, and not before. They agreed that that was a reasonable thing for them to accept and understood that the actuary would take into account all he could foresee.
Agreement was reached, but since then the rules of the game have been changed while the game has been in progress. My right hon. Friend has changed April, 1957, to October, 1956. It is a great pity that this process of discussion, consultation and negotiation did not take place between the Department and the local authority representatives about the change in date, but I should probably be out of order if I pursued the rights and wrongs of that rather narrow point. One of the vitally interested parties in the "package deal" negotiations was going to be seriously affected by this change.
My right hon. Friend has said that the change in the date is very slight or means nothing to the local authorities, but it brings nearer and closer within the purview of the Government Actuary a known factor which he has to take into account if he behaves as Government actuaries always do, short of the kind of instruction that is written into the Amendment. If it were only a speculative change in 1957, by October, 1956, it is a very real and immediate and calculable change. It would have been a very naughty Government Actuary who did not account and allow for it unless he had the kind of instruction written into the Bill by this Amendment.
I say with great sorrow that I cannot escape the feeling that the local authorities, as partners in this operation and as probably the most interested party in the results of what is now happening, have had rather a shabby deal. They have not been carried along with my right hon. Friend in this matter as I know he has tried to do in other respects.
I am not authorised to speak as an official representative of any local authorities, but, for example, I know that

the county boroughs, who employ a large number of teachers, feel this sense of grievance. I know also that the county councils share the feeling that it would have been much better had they been consulted and brought into this operation at an earlier stage. Both the A.M.C., representing the county boroughs, and the C.C.A., representing the county councils, feel that what is now being done is, in some measure at any rate, a breach of their understanding of the agreement.
My right hon. Friend has told the House that he feels that he has been clear in his mind from the beginning that his understanding of the situation was the correct one. We all have sufficiently intimate knowledge of my right bon. Friend to know that he would not have expressed that opinion had he not held it sincerely and after examination of all that has happened.
Nevertheless, it is true that all the other parties to the agreement have held a contrary view. It is not for me to judge who is right and who is wrong except to say that I view this change, in the circumstances in which the local authorities will be called upon to operate this Bill when it becomes law, with a good deal of unhappiness. I hope very much that if between now and the return of this Measure from another place, my right hon. Friend has time to search his conscience and apply his generosity to the local authorities, he will do so. If he does, I know that he will receive the support of the great part of the House.

Mr. Ede: What we have just heard seems to me to be the most unkindest cut of all when I think of the way in which, in Committee, every time the hon. Member for Walton (Mr. K. Thompson) moved an Amendment, the right hon. Gentleman jumped to his feet to accept it before anyone had an opportunity of examining it at all carefully. This final reproof, delivered apparently by one who must be used to delivering admonitions, so complete and typical was it, seems to me to represent the final opinion of the local authorities on the attitude of the Minister.
I am the President of the County Councils Association, a body which was mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. Throughout the discussions on this Bill I have taken no part in the deliberations of the County Councils Association This was because,


before I was a member of a local authority, I was a teacher. Therefore, in any conflict of interest I always become primeval. So I took no part in any of the discussions on this matter which affected the local authorities.
What I said when we were in Committee, and what I repeat now, is that 31st March, 1956, or 1st April, 1956, were not in the report of the Working Party. What was there was the appointed day. That was varied without consultation with the local authorities, when the Minister, finding that he could not get his Bill through both Houses by 31st March, 1956, moved the appointed day to 1st October in the hope that between now and then some other negotiations might reach a satisfactory conclusion. My view is that he should have gone to the local authorities and said, "We propose to alter the appointed day. Does this lead in your minds to any alteration in any of the terms which we have hitherto agreed?"
That seems to me to be an indispensable preliminary to making so fundamental an alteration. I am not surprised at the hon. Gentleman was obviously addressing his admonition to his right hon. Friend more in sorrow than in anger. I have long ceased sorrowing for the right hon. Gentleman. He is not worth it.

7.45 p.m.

Sir D. Eccles: I must clear up two points. The first is that it is really very bad of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. K. Thompson) to suggest that the change in the date of the Burnham Award had anything to do with me. The action came from the Burnham Committee and the local authorities without any consultation with me—quite rightly. It is time, however, that the local authorities took their share of the blame. They never came near me.
It was their action which brought forward the date of the next Burnham increase. They must have known what they were doing, but nobody complained to me from the County Councils' Association. It has been known for two months that we were going to amend the Bill in this way. In fact, for what it is worth, the Secretary of the Association of Education Committees considered that

the Amendment was strictly in accordance with the bargain.
As the local authority representatives know perfectly well—and it would be a good thing if my hon. Friend reminded them of it—we constantly held out to the teachers that it was worth their while to pay 6 per cent. because in a year or two the local authorities would be forced to pay more than 6 per cent. on account of the next Burnham Award. That was the basis of the whole bargain.
Of course this Amendment has nothing to do with the teachers. It is a dispute about the financial burden on the local authorities. When, however, my hon. Friend asks me to search my conscience, I can tell him that where the search has to go on is in the conscience of the Association of Municipal Corporations.

Mr. R. Moss: Will the Minister allow me to put a question? This point, which may be one of substance, is the possibility not of an earlier Burnham Award but of an interim increase of salary. Was that taken into account by the local authorities, because that would have postponed the major Burnham award to its proper date in 1957, but would have brought earlier, in October, 1956, an interim increase in salaries?

Sir D. Eccles: As far as I know, any of the suggestions made for an increase of salary were all made on the basis of 1st April next, one day after 31st March, which was our dividing line. I do not believe that either side discussed an interim increase during the month of March.

Amendment agreed to.

Orders of the Day — Clause 6.—(EXTENSION OF SERVICE TO AGE OF 70.)

Mr. Vosper: I beg to move, in page 5, line 31, at the beginning to insert "subsection (2) of."
This is a drafting Amendment, as is also the next one, in line 32, after "teachers," to insert "otherwise than."

Mr. Short: Mr. Deputy-Speaker, may I raise a point of order about the Amendment to Clause 5 standing on the Order Paper in my name, namely, in page 5, line 10, at the end to insert:
(4) Where the part of the salary of a teacher which has vested in him in respect of a day


of service after the commencement of this Act is greater than one three-hundred and sixty-fifth part of the annual rate of his salary on that day, that day shall be reckoned in the calculation of the number of years of service of the teacher as a day and such fraction of a day as the Minister may determine:
Provided that the teacher shall not be credited in any year beginning on the first day of April with a greater number of days of service than there are days in that year.
This has not been called, and I understand that it is out of order because it increases the charge, but, at the same time, it is within the Money Resolution. I did not know when we started business today that it was out of order. I take it that in order to have the Amendment discussed, I should have had to move an Amendment to the committal Motion at the beginning of our proceedings. As I did not know that the Amendment was out of order, I could not have done that. In view of this difficulty, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I wonder whether you would allow me to move, That the Bill be recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House in respect of the Amendment standing in my name, which falls within the Money Resolution but which, because it increases the charge, can only be discussed in the way I have suggested.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The reason why the hon. Gentleman's Amendment is out of order is that, although it is within the Money Resolution, it increases the charge by what it does. An Amendment which increases a charge can be called only in Committee and not on Report. If the Amendment had been included in the recommittal Motion at the beginning of our proceedings it would have been all right.

Mr. Short: I appreciate that, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and I am not questioning the reason why the Amendment cannot be called now. The point that I am making is that at the beginning of business today, when the recommittal Motion was considered, I did not know—1 could not have known—that my Amendment would be ruled out of order. Therefore, perhaps I might be permitted to move a recommittal Motion in order to include my Amendment. Would you be prepared, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to accept from me the Motion which I have

mentioned so that the House might consider a very sensible and necessary Amendment which is desired by all teachers?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I am sorry, but I could not accept such a Motion. I am sorry that the hon. Member did not know that his Amendment was out of order. If he had asked me, I could probably have told him. I am afraid that there is nothing that I can do about it now.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: In line 32, after "teachers", insert "otherwise than".—[Mr. Vosper]

Orders of the Day — Clause 7.—(CALCULATION OF SALARY AND AVERAGE SALARY.)

Mr. Vosper: I beg to move, in page 6, line 38, to leave out from beginning to "during" in line 39 and to insert:
the contributions payable in respect of the teacher under the principal Act or this Act".
This Amendment and the next three Amendments to the Clause cover exactly the same point. They are partly of a drafting nature and partly consequential upon the new Clause relating to the re-employment of teachers.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendments made: In page 6, line 42, leave out from beginning to "and" in line 44.

In line 47 leave out "accordingly" and insert:
by reference to the salary at which the teacher was last employed before the reduction, or at which he is for the time being employed, whichever is the higher".

In page 7, line 5, leave out from "of" to end of line 7 and insert:
any higher salary by reference to which those contributions are required by this subsection to be calculated ".—[Mr. Vosper.]

Orders of the Day — Clause 10.—(INCREASED ANNUAL ALLOW ANCE IN EXCHANGE FOR SURRENDER OF ADDITIONAL ALLOWANCE.)

Mr. Vosper: I beg to move, in page 10, line 3, after "enactment", to insert:
(including, unless the context otherwise requires, any enactment contained in this Act)".

This is a drafting Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

Orders of the Day — Clause 11.—(ADDITIONAL ALLOWANCES AND SHORT SERVICE GRATUITIES IN RESPECT OF SUCCESSIVE PERIODS OF SERVICE.)

Mr. Vosper: I beg to move, in page 10, line 14, to leave out from "shall" to "be" in line 15.
This Amendment and the next Amendment go together. They are drafting Amendments, the purpose being to avoid any ambiguity arising from the word "again".

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: In page 10, line 17, leave out from "on" to "service" and insert:
the termination of any subsequent period of employment in contributory ".—[Mr. Vosper.]

Orders of the Day — Clause 23.—(DISMISSAL OF TEACHERS OVER SIXTY-FIVE.)

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I beg to move, in page 16, line 3, to leave out Clause 23.

This is a drafting Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

Orders of the Day — Clause 24.—(ELECTION BY TEACHERS FOR PROVISIONS OF THE SCHEME.)

Amendments made: In page 16, line 9, leave out "scheme" and insert "Teachers Superannuation Scheme".

In line 13, leave out "Teachers Superannuation" and insert "said".—[Mr. Henderson Stewart.]

Orders of the Day — Clause 25.—(CONTRIBUTIONS TOWARDS BENEFITS UNDER TEACHERS SUPER ANNUATION SCHEME.)

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I beg to move, in page 16, line 40, after "service" to insert:
or upon being employed in service after employment in second class service.
Proviso (ii) to the new Section 103 of the 1946 Act proposed by Clause 25 gives a teacher who suffers a reduction in salary the right to elect that his former higher salary should be taken into account for contribution and pension purposes in the following circumstances: first, while continuing to be employed in service in Scotland and, secondly, on being reemployed in service in Scotland. There are sometimes cases of teachers from England who retire to Scotland and are employed in the service in Scotland. The proviso does not give them the same right to elect as that given to Scottish

teachers. The purpose of the Amendment is to give them that right. I am sure this is something that all hon. Members would wish done.

Amendment agreed to.

Orders of the Day — Clause 26.—(TEACHERS SUPERANNUATION ACCOUNT AND ACTUARIAL INQUIRIES.)

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I beg to move, in page 19, line 48, after "service" to insert "on or".

This is a drafting Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

Orders of the Day — Clause 28.—(INTERPRETATION OF PART IV OF ACT OF 1946.)

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I beg to move, in page 21, line 28, to leave out subparagraph (i).

This is a drafting Amendment.

Mr. M. Stewart: Will the hon. Gentleman clear up a point for me? How can an Amendment to leave out a whole subparagraph be a drafting Amendment? We swallowed it a little earlier when the hon. Gentleman said that an Amendment to leave out a whole Clause was a drafting Amendment. We now have another example. Perhaps he will unravel the problem.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: It is, technically, only a drafting Amendment. The reason for the Amendment is that Clause 24, which was added to the Bill in Committee, makes unnecessary the proviso which it is proposed to delete.

Amendment agreed to.

Orders of the Day — Clause 29.—(AMENDMENT OF PART I OF THE THIRD SCHEDULE TO THE ACT OF 1946.)

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I beg to move, in page 22, line 43, to leave out subparagraph (iii) and to insert:
(iii) the amount of the additional allowance in respect of the period before the commencement of the Teachers (Superannuation) Act, 1956, shall be calculated at the rate of one-thirtieth of the pensionable salary of the teacher for a year of service.
This is also a drafting Amendment, but perhaps I had better explain it. In the early drafts of the Bill the proposed subsection (1, b), instead of stating the proportion of the pensionable salary to be taken into account in assessing the lump sum, provided that the proportion was to


be prescribed in the teachers' superannuation scheme. The proviso which it is here proposed to delete was in appropriate form for the earlier drafts of the Bill, but it is not appropriate to sub-paragraph (1, b) as it now appears in the Bill. The proviso which it is proposed to substitute is in an appropriate form and will have the effect which the original proviso was intended to have. Consequently, this really is a drafting Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

Orders of the Day — Clause 30.—(AMENDMENT OF PART H OF THE THIRD SCHEDULE TO THE ACT OF 1946.)

Amendment made: In page 25, line 18, after "3A," insert:
where any teacher holds a post of special responsibility within the meaning of the regulations for the time being in force made by the Secretary of State under section seventy-nine of the Act of 1946 (which relates to the salaries of teachers) and will not, on completion of forty-five years of service or of service and second class service, have attained the age for retirement prescribed under the last foregoing paragraph, for the teacher to be deemed to have offered to resign from the said post on the day on which he completes the said forty-five years, and for the retirement of the teacher from the said post on the said day if his resignation is accepted, so, however, that nothing in any provision included in the scheme under this paragraph shall prevent the employer from offering and the teacher from accepting appointment to another post;
3B "—[Mr. Henderson Stewart.]

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I beg to move, in page 26, line 13, after "matters," to insert:
(including the adaptation of enactments).
The new paragraph (3, b) in the Bill which it is proposed to amend empowers the Secretary of State to include in the Scottish teachers' superannuation scheme provision enabling a teacher to exchange his lump sum, or what remains of it after he has surrendered part of it in exchange for a widow's or widower's pension, for an additional annual allowance. There are references in various Statutes to an annual allowance, and it is necessary to make clear whether each of these references is to be interpreted as relating to the original annual allowance only, or to the annual allowance as increased by paragraph 3B.
The purpose of the Amendment is to make clear that the Secretary of State can deal with this matter as "consequen-

tial on other matters" in the new provisions which he inserted in the teachers' superannuation scheme.

Amendment agreed to.

8.0 p.m

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I beg to move, in page 26, line 23, to leave out "number of completed years" and to insert "length".
This Amendment is consequential upon Amendments made in Committee under which the whole of a teacher's service can count for pension instead of only the number of completed years.

Amendment agreed to.

Orders of the Day — Clause 37.—(SHORT TITLE, CITATION, COMMENCEMENT AND EXTENT.)

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I beg to move, in page 28, line 12, at the end to insert:
and shall be construed as one with those Acts".
This is another drafting Amendment. Its purpose is to apply the definitions in the Education (Scotland) Acts from 1939 and in the Bill to the Clauses in Part II of the Bill.

Miss Herbison: I take it that the Joint Under-Secretary had to move this because he could not be in his place when it was taken in Committee.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I do not know the answer to that one. As I have said, it is a drafting Amendment, and its purpose is to apply definitions in various Acts to the Clauses in Part 11 of the Bill. If I have been remiss at an earlier point, I am very sorry, but I was not aware of it.

Amendment agreed to.

Orders of the Day — First Schedule.—(MODIFICATION OF EN ACTMENTS IN RELATION TO TEACHERS ELECTING UNDER S. 10 OF THIS ACT.)

Mr. Vosper: I beg to move, in page 30 line 31, column 2, to leave out "1937" and to insert "1956".
I would not say that this is a drafting Amendment, but it is self-explanatory and it rectifies a rather obvious error at present in the Bill.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Vosper: I beg to move, in page 30, to leave out lines 48 to 55.
This Amendment is consequential upon the repeal of Section 7 of the Education Act, 1945.

Amendment agreed to.

Orders of the Day — Title

Mr. Vosper: I beg to move, in line 1, after "Amend", to insert:
the Elementary School Teachers (Superannuation) Act, 1898".
This Amendment becomes necessary on account of monthly payments which would affect deferred annuities arising out of the Elementary School Teachers (Superannuation Act), 1898.

Amendment agreed to.

8.4 p.m.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
We are now entering upon the final stage of the Bill's progress. It has had a long and somewhat troublesome passage, but we must all agree that the Bill emerges a great deal better than it was at the beginning. That, of course, is as it should be in a democratic assembly, and we may all claim some part of the credit for it. In the short time I mean to occupy in moving the Third Reading, I should like to direct attention to three main provisions of the Bill.
The main purpose of the Bill was and still is to restore and buttress for the future the solvency of the Teachers' Superannuation Scheme. The provisions in that regard have not been altered. With one exception, to which I shall refer in a moment, it can be fairly said that these basic provisions have won general approval in the country, and certainly majority approval during the Committee stage. There was, for example, and still is, no dispute about the actuary's finding that the Account was actuarially in heavy deficit. That is accepted, as is the fact that without the infusion of fresh credits in respect of the past and new guarantees in respect of the future, the deficit would have grown until it had virtually destroyed the Scheme.
The proposal that the Treasury should meet the whole of the deficit in respect of the past, has been and still is accepted by all as a just and proper arrangement.

It is true that it has been discounted by some Members of the Opposition as being no more than a bookkeeping device. All I would say upon that is that, even judged upon that score, it is a device which I am bound to say the Opposition seemed strangely timorous about adopting when in power.
It may interest the House to note that, whereas at the time the Bill was introduced the deficiency was estimated at £324 million, today, with the additional benefits incorporated in the Bill during the Committee stage and on Report, and with the postponement of the increased contributions until October, the estimated deficit has risen to £338 million, made up of £302 million in respect of England and Wales and £36 million in respect of Scotland.
The local authorities' guarantee, which they undertook, encountered little real criticism in the Committee or outside. That was not surprising, because, without doubt, that guarantee affords the teachers' superannuation scheme an assurance or guarantee of stability better than has ever before been provided by Parliament. It means, as the Minister of Education said a few moments ago, that the contribution of the local authorities will rise beyond 6 per cent. for the next accounting period in 1961.
The only matter upon which there was in the early stage of the Bill any substantial difference of opinion was the proposed increased contribution by teachers. Without doubt we had strong opposition in that respect, and I suppose that we still have. We have discussed this proposal so fully already, however, that I need say only a few words about it. The increase in the teachers' contribution is an integral part of the tripartite plan to which Government, local authorities and teachers contribute. Without it, it is no exaggeration to say, there would have been no plan; there would have been no Treasury write-off; there would have been no local authority guarantee.
It was essential, in equity and common sense, that the teachers should play their part, through the 1 per cent. contribution, in establishing and maintaining the scheme on a sound basis. When I reflect that on 1st April next—ten days hence—all Scottish teachers will gain a 7 per cent. increase in their salaries—the Regulations are now in the Vote Office—and


many will gain a great deal more than 7 per cent.—

Miss Herbison: On a point of order. Is it not the case that on the Third Reading of a Bill, one deals only with what is in the Bill? The Bill has no reference to negotiations on Scottish teachers' salaries.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. Lady is perfectly correct. On Third Reading we can deal only with what is in the Bill.

Mr. Stewart: I was merely talking about the teachers' increased contribution and saying, as has been said time and time again in the course of our discussions, that when we consider the conditions surrounding the new Bill, the Third Reading of which we are now discussing, and when, as my right hon. Friend indicated not very long ago, teachers in all parts of Great Britain may look for salary increases of substantial amounts before the end of the year, I feel justified in asserting that the price which we invite teachers to pay for their security is neither harsh nor unreasonable.
I come now to the second main provision which I want to examine. Had we been able to include a widows and orphans pension scheme, paid for in part by the employers, I well believe that the teachers' opposition to the Bill would have been much less severe than it was. I think that the hon. Lady agrees with me. For reasons which have already been fully discussed, and into which I shall not go now, the Government have been unable to make that particular financial provision but the Bill now contains all the powers necessary to establish, within a short time, a pensions scheme for widows, widowers, children and dependants which I may fairly claim to be broader and more enlightened than any other before enjoyed the teaching profession. It is in the Bill now.
In the name of Her Majesty's Government, I call upon the teachers' organisations in Scotland, England and Wales to combine with us and the local authorities at the earliest moment in discussing these provisions, and between us, with good will and determination, to institute an agreed scheme which will help to end the anxiety of teachers about the financial security of their widows and dependants.

We are very ready to put our time and all our services at their disposal for this purpose. Metaphorically, I should say we are ready to start the talks tomorrow.
The third section of the Bill to which I would invite the attention of the House is that providing for the series of additional benefits which in its original or subsequently amended form the Bill now offers to teachers. I listed some of these benefits in the Standing Committee. I should like to summarise them now because most of them are improvements for which the teachers have made insistent demands over a long period and which, therefore, now being conceded, must be of substantial, or at any rate of high, value to them.
First, as to pensionable or average salary, the salary upon which retiring allowances are in future to be calculated is the average of the salary for the last three years of service instead of the last five years as at present. This is obviously of special advantage to teachers at a time when salaries are rising and are reviewed triennially. Further, when a teacher accepts a lower-paid post during his last three years of service, he is now to be given the option of contributing and having his pension calculated on his former higher salary. For many teachers that must be a considerable advantage.
Next, the additional allowance, or the lump sum, as we call it, in respect of future service will be calculated at the rate of three-eightieths of the pensionable or average salary instead of three-ninetieths as at present for each year of service up to forty-five years.
When a teacher who has completed ten but less than twenty years of service retires on account of any disablement, his retiring allowance will now, after this Bill becomes law, be calculated as it would have been if he had completed twenty years of service. I admit that will not affect large numbers of teachers, but to those whom it will affect it may well prove of great value.
In providing for years of service to count, the raising of the compulsory retiring age from 65 to 70 is accompanied by the raising of the number of years which may count for the calculation of pension from 40 to 45.
There was considerable discussion about incomplete years of service. The condition that only completed years of


service may count in the calculation of retiring allowance is now abolished. Days of service after the last completed year may now be counted; and that, I am advised, is more generous than in any other public pensions scheme.
Teachers in Scotland who are employed on the temporary staff and paid by the day will in future count each day as a day and a fraction of a day in calculating the length of their service. That was put to me with considerable force by teachers more than once as a change which should be made.
Teachers who before they enter the profession, have had experience in other occupations of value to them as teachers, will be able now to buy in a period up to five years which will count in the calculation of their retiring allowances. However, as we have seen—and in some ways it is regrettable—National Service does not count there.
Teachers wishing to allocate a part of their pension in exchange for a pension to a spouse or a dependant may, under the Bill, take the medical examination on attaining the age of 60 instead of having to wait until they retire. I am sure that the hon. Lady knows, as I know, quite a number of cases where that change of date would in the past have made a very great difference to a man's position.
For the first time, teachers are to be given the option of exchanging part of their lump sum for additional pensions.
The pension of a teacher returning to full-time teaching employment after retirement will no longer be suspended unless he is entitled to the same or a larger salary on re-employment than the salary which he was drawing before retirement. When his salary on re-employment is less than his salary at retirement he will be able to draw as much in pay plus pension as he was receiving when he retired.
I will just mention two or three other provisions. I hope that the House will bear with me. It is very necessary to put on record exactly what this Bill does for the advantage of the tens of thousands of teachers concerned.
Returning to the subject of contributions, when a teacher returns to contributory service after retirement but his additional service does not lead to an increase

in his pension, the contributions paid by him during his additional service will be returned to him. That, I think, is a matter of fairness and plain justice.
Scottish teachers have frequently put to me a point in regard to arrears of contributions for war service. Teachers in Scotland who are in arrears with payment of contributions in respect of war service will now be given the option of having the arrears and the accumulated interest written off, and the war service deleted from their record. I cannot tell the House how many appeals I have had for that to be done.
Scottish teachers who elected that the teachers' superannuation scheme as it was before 1926 should continue to apply to them without modifications are given the right now to elect that the new benefits provided by this Bill shall also apply to them.
Lastly, may I mention the monthly payment of pensions? As soon as arrangements can be made—as has been said by my right hon. Friend we hope it will be by about this time next year—pensions will be paid monthly instead of quarterly.
I readily acknowledge that some of these improvements formed the subject of Amendments tabled and supported by hon. Members opposite. I have already said that we have all taken our part in this general process of improvement, and it happens that in every case of that kind the Amendments were adopted by the Government. In other cases the initiative came from the Government, in a genuine effort to meet the needs of the teachers.
Together, these benefits form an impressive list of ameliorations; taken with the other provisions in the Bill to which I have drawn attention, and the developments outside which we know are happening, they constitute, I think it no exaggeration to say, the most liberal and imaginative charter of rights ever offered to the teaching profession.

Mr. W. T. Williams: Nonsense.

Mr. Stewart: I am proud to have had a hand in bringing that about. What we do tonight is a piece of basic work, and without any doubt, the claim which I have made is justified. I am certain it will redound to the credit of Parliament—

Mr. W. T. Williams: Let the Minister look at the empty benches behind him.

Mr. Stewart: —and will, I trust, convince the teachers that they stand, as by virtue of their calling they ought to stand, high in the public esteem.

8.22 p.m.

Miss Herbison: I am indeed astounded by the last few sentences of the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. I wish to refer to the debate on the Second Reading of this Bill when I complained that the Bill had been brought in with indecent haste. I say now that it has reached its Third Reading with the same type of indecent haste. When these complaints were made during the Second Reading debate, the Joint Under-Secretary of State said:
I am sorry if inconvenience was caused to her or to the teachers of Scotland. Of course, ample opportunity will now be available to us all."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th December, 1955; Vol. 547, c. 316.]
I think the Joint Under-Secretary said that in all sincerity and that he did hope that we should have ample opportunity. But he did not reckon with "Big Brother"—the Minister of Education.
After quite a considerable struggle, hon. Members representing Scottish constituencies were able to have that part of the Bill dealing with Scottish matters discussed in the Scottish Standing Committee. We find that the Minister of Education then told the hon. Members representing English and Welsh constituencies that they would have to speed up the consideration of their part of the Bill. He said:
The interests of England and Wales demand that we here should have our debate on these important matters as near the same time as that on those affecting Scotland."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee D, 9th February, 1956; c. 295.]
What arrogance does that man take unto himself. Almost every precedent shows that there is no substance in that argument advanced by the Minister. Indeed, the usual procedure on education Bills, housing Bills, and health Bills, is that the ones applying to England and Wales are taken first and those for Scotland follow. But this arrogant Minister could not see anything being discussed that applied to Scotland before he had had time to make his statements to the Committee dealing with that part of the Bill which applies

to England and Wales. The final insult, not to hon. Members representing Scottish constituencies, but to the Scottish nation and particularly to the Scottish teachers, was that Part III of the Bill was taken in such a manner that Scottish Members were deprived from taking part in any of the discussion upon it or upon any Clauses that applied not only to England and Wales, but to Scotland also.
When the Minister tonight moved his Amendment to Clause 37 he was unable to explain to me why it had not been moved earlier. It was not moved earlier because the Joint Under-Secretary of State was glued to his seat in the Scottish Standing Committee while this Clause was being rushed through by the Minister of Education.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: Earlier I did not understand what the hon. Lady meant, and I thank her for enlightening me.

Miss Herbison: It shows the type of treatment meted out to Scottish Members during the discussions on this Bill.
During the Committee discussions I witnessed the actions of a Minister who was telling us what a clever and fine fellow he was, and almost always he was riding roughshod over the hon. Members in the Committee, and he has been riding roughshod over the teachers in these matters.
So far as I know, not a word of protest was made by the Secretary of State for Scotland or by the Joint Under-Secretary about Scottish Members being deprived of their just rights. All through the discussions the Scottish Ministers have shown a willingness to be dragged at the heels of the Minister of Education, and that willingness is in direct contradiction to the fulsome promises they made to the Scottish people that Scottish affairs would be left much more in the hands of Scottish Members.
The Joint Under-Secretary of State seems to think, now that we have come to the Third Reading and he has announced a list of improvements, that this is an excellent Measure. I think his words were that it was one of the most "liberal" that had ever come before us.

Mr. W. T. Williams: And imaginative.

Miss Herbison: I want to deal with the "liberal" side of the proposal. It may be that he used the word because the Minister goes under the guise of a "National Liberal." When the Bill came before us for Second Reading its provisions were completely inadequate. It is true that certain improvements have been made and that, although they might be considered as minor ones, each is of great importance to certain teachers in the United Kingdom. For these reasons we are glad that these minor improvements have been made. But almost every one of them came as a result of pressure from Labour Members. Time and time again Amendments appeared on the Order Paper in the names of hon. Members on this side of the House many days before similar Amendments appeared in the name of the Minister. At no time did a Scottish Tory Member support us by adding his name to our Amendments.
The Joint Under-Secretary told us tonight that almost every one of those minor improvements had been asked for for a considerable time by the teachers. In those circumstances, surely it would have been sensible if the Government, instead of hurrying the Bill before the House, had considered these matters carefully and had incorporated them in the Bill when it was presented, rather than wait for pressure to be brought to bear upon them to do so. Had the Government acted sensibly in that way, how much more contented would our teachers have been today? During the Second Reading debate the Minister said:
I hope that what is said in the House today will stir up a little more public interest in the conditions and the prospects of the teaching profession.
His hopes have materialised. Not only has what he said stirred up public interest, it has raised the wrath of every teacher in this country.

Mr. E. Partridge: No.

Miss Herbison: If the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Partridge) had been sitting here all day he might have been able to tell us how many teachers were pleased with what is happening.
Another of the provisions which we are expected to applaud is that which deals with the actuarial deficiency. The

Joint Under-Secretary told us how important—almost how generous—a provision it was. The Joint Under-Secretary took great credit for it on behalf of the Government. During the Second Reading debate the Minister said:
the Government are now taking over the whole of the deficiency as a charge on the Exchequer alone. That is a concession quite without precedent in size…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th December, 1955; Vol. 546, c. 210–212.]
I would like to parody a well-known phrase in this instance. Here we have "Bighearted David" speaking. What do we find? What is this great generosity which the Government have shown? First, we do not regard it as a concession. We take it that the 1925 Act always meant that any actuarial deficiency would be covered by the Exchequer.
What does the supposed concession represent in terms of additional finance to be provided by the Government? The Chancellor of the Exchequer will not have to find one penny during the lifetime of this Government to clear up that actuarial deficiency. Indeed, if my calculations are correct it will be almost forty years before any Chancellor will be asked to provide anything from public funds to wipe out the actuarial deficiency. That is the extent of the Government's generosity. That is what the Joint Under-Secretary said he wanted the people to know about. Since he wanted them to know about it, I felt that it would be as well to give them all the facts. The Government have put the day of reckoning so far away that they will never be asked to honour their pledge. I have no doubt that it will be honoured, but it will certainly be by a Government of a very different colour.
Our chief criticism of the Bill is the hopeless inadequacy of its pension provisions. The Joint Under-Secretary outlined the improvement in those provisions, but the improvement for widows is at the expense of the superannuation provisions of the men themselves. All these improvements must be financed by the teachers, not by the Government. The teachers have said all along that they were willing to pay increased contributions provided there was a just pension scheme for widows, widowers, children and dependants. This is exactly what we have not been given in the Bill.
In all their representations during the Committee the teachers made it clear that they thought the increase of 1 per cent. in their contributions was completely unjust so long as the Bill carried no adequate pension provisions for widows and dependants. The teachers today have not altered their opinion one whit. They still regard that increased contribution of 1 per cent. as an imposition which they ought not to have been asked to bear.
The Minister, in some of his Amendments today, and the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland at other times, have been willing to call in aid what happens to civil servants, when it suited their argument. They did it today on National Service. They always resent when we or the teachers call in aid the adequate and just pension provisions that civil servants have. The Joint Under-Secretary of State said he was ready tomorrow and that the Government were ready tomorrow to get into consultation with the local authorities to work out a just pension scheme.

Mr. E. G. Willis: That was said metaphorically.

Miss Herbison: It may have been. I put no trust in it at all. The Government could have waited quite a considerable time to put the pension on a sound actuarial basis without spending Government or local government money.
There is evidence from Scotland, and I expect from England, that many local authorities are toeing the line that Glasgow made, alone, at the meeting to which reference has frequently been made. They are willing to consider a scheme that will be just. I gave the list to the Joint Under-Secretary of State in Committee. If the Government had been wise, if they had been liberal, as the Joint Under-Secretary of State said they had been, and if they had been worried about the shortage of teachers and the disastrous effect it is having on the education of many of our children, they would have waited and would have made many further attempts to get local authorities to agree to a proper scheme.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: It may be that the hon. Lady has news which is later than my information. The official letter we received from the Glasgow Corporation some little time ago on this point was at least vague and was not in the definite terms that the hon. Lady

mentions. It may be that she has further information. If so, I should like to hear it.

Miss Herbison: I have not mentioned any definite term. The Joint Under-Secretary of State cannot deny that the representative from Glasgow at that meeting made it quite clear—I cannot go into the terms of a letter which I have not seen—that the Glasgow Corporation was willing to consider a scheme. I gave to the Joint Under-Secretary the list that had been given to me of other education authorities in Scotland. It was not denied in Committee. All I am saying to the Joint Under-Secretary of State is that there is evidently a change in the feelings of many local authorities on this matter and that the Government would have been wise to wait a little time in order to get for the teachers what the teachers justly demanded in pension provisions.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: rose—

Miss Herbison: I am sorry but I cannot give way.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew): I think that the hon. Lady pointed out to me a little while ago that on Third Reading we could only discuss what is in the Bill.

Miss Herbison: There is, of course, a pension provision in the Bill. I am saying that it is an inadequate pension provision. What I have tried to do is to show why we on this side of the House are voting against the Third Reading of the Bill. We consider it a most inadequate Measure. We consider that this Measure, by arousing the wrath of the teachers in Britain and by making them dissatisfied, is the worst means of recruiting people to the teaching profession. The Government have done grave disservice by this Measure to the whole of the teaching and education prospects in Britain.

8.41 p.m.

Dr. King: The great defect in this Bill was in the Bill when it began its rake's progress under the direction of the right hon. Lady the Member for Moss Side (Dame Florence Horsbrugh) and lost her a seat in the Cabinet. It was in the Bill when it came to the House on First Reading. It has survived every stage of this Bill up to the Third Reading, and it has cost the Minister of Education the confidence and esteem of the teaching profession.
It is a defect which, incidentally, the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland did not mention when, in his imaginative peroration, he described the wonders of this Bill, which according to him surpassed the glory of all previous Measures, the great 1902 Education Act, the great 1918 Education Act, and even the quite useful 1925 Pensions Act. That defect is the now notorious imposition of the 6 per cent. contribution. Tonight we have no longer the opportunity of amending or removing it. All that we can do is to vote against the Bill and attempt to express and explain the bitter opposition of the teaching profession to this 6 per cent. contribution.
The fact that the 6 per cent. remains in the Bill is due to the lamentable running away of a considerable number of hon. Members opposite—some in spite of direct election promises—from their behaviour in the last Parliament, when in union with the Opposition they destroyed the 6 per cent. proposal. Tonight is the last chance of hon. Gentlemen opposite redeeming themselves. Instead of doing so, they will vote for the imposition of a wage cut on the teaching profession because, whatever salaries the teachers get from the present Burnham negotiations, the cut remains. No teacher is unintelligent enough to swallow the argument that because the cut is delayed and is now to be imposed after the new salary increases have been made, the levying of a 6 per cent. contribution on salary instead of 5 per cent. is not a real cut.
Why are the teachers angry? The hon. Member who has since left the Chamber and who interrupted my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) when she suggested that the teachers were angry does not really know the teaching profession. I want to try to explain just why the teachers are indignant. The simple facts are that in 1918, in a much more glorious epoch for education and under a very significant figure in the nation's march to democratic education, the great Mr. Fisher, the teachers were promised and even granted a non-contributory pension. This was whittled away by a 5 per cent. so-called voluntary contribution, and in 1925 to a permanent 5 per cent. contribution. That 5 per cent. contribution came to be regarded by the teaching profession as the

highest amount which it would have to pay for what its members had always regarded, what Mr. Fisher regarded and what even the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) regarded, in his last speech before he became a Minister, as the goal of the teaching profession—a non-contributory pension scheme.
It is only against that background of what the teachers regard as a breach of faith that one can explain their present indignation. It is curious and well worth recalling that my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Mr. Cove), speaking in this Chamber over 30 years ago, prophesied the introduction of this Bill. Speaking in 1925 he told the House of Commons that unless the teachers' superannuation arrangements were made a fund some Minister would plead, as has this Minister, financial necessity as justification for this Measure. The Government at the time pooh-poohed the idea that any one like the two latest Ministers of Education would appear on the scene.
The Duchess of Atholl, who was Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education, said:
… it does not seem to us that what happened in 1922 "—
that was the betrayal of the Fisher noncontributory scheme:
is any reason why any one should fear that any Government will have a capricious policy in regard to teachers pensions.…
Tonight's Third Reading debate shows how wrong the Duchess of Atholl was about that, even if right about Spain.
As for Lord Eustace Percy, the Minister, he was categoric on the subject. He said:
… under our proposal "—
the new proposals of 1925:
the Treasury is solely responsible for finding the cash to pay the benefits.
He prophesied—he went ahead of the period even of this Minister—that in 45 years' time:
… the Treasury will be paying 13 per cent. The whole increased liability must fall on the Treasury."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th May, 1925; Vol. 183, c. 1783–1816.]
It is no wonder, therefore, that the teachers regard this 6 per cent. as a breach of faith. But I believe that what has embittered them more than anything has been the long-drawn out manoeuvring


of the Government—and of the last Government—over this Bill; the yielding to defeat two years ago and the return two years later with the same punishment. But whatever the main reason, whether Government shuffling over the Bill for two years, or the breach of faith, or the burden of an extra charge on income at a time when they are fighting a battle for increased income, the teachers are certainly angry.
It is a very loyal profession. There are few extra demands—and there have been many made on them in these postwar, expansive and difficult days—that the teachers of England have not loyally risen to. In fact, one must be true and say that, unlike the profession in most Continental countries, the teaching profession in this country is, on the whole, conservative. Heaven knows why, because its salaries have never been cut except by Conservative Governments. I would emphasise that today it is ale staid schoolmasters and the staid schoolmistresses, not just a handful of Communists, who talk wildly about action againt the Government if the Bill passes. It is Mr. Chips who puts down his chalk, takes off his gown and goes about waving the red flag.
I do not think that the Minister can be, or can afford to be, pleased about this. I do not think that he can be happy at the thought that he has turned a sedate group of patriotic and very respectable people into an irate profession. In the process, the right hon. Gentleman has, by this Bill, smashed the school savings movement which was manned, extended and developed year by year by the voluntary labours of the teachers.
Everybody who believes in Britain and in the proper training of our children believes in the value of the work of the National Savings Movement in schools. I know that some people have criticised the action of the teachers in refusing to continue that voluntary service as a protest against this Bill, but I think the teaching profession can quite rightly say that but for the direct action it took over savings very little notice would have been taken of their claim. Those who sneer at the triviality of the gesture might remember that that very triviality springs from the desire of the teaching profession

not to do anything in its fight against this Bill which would hurt education itself.
Hence during the last stages of this Bill the hesitating behaviour of the Executive in moving towards direct action in withdrawing teachers from the work of looking after school meals and then, in the interests of the whole school meals service, the change of policy on the part of the Executive to what I think was a wise decision, not to take that drastic action: but that it was contemplated, and is still advocated by many teachers is some measure of the anger of the teaching profession which has been questioned tonight by an hon. Member.
The fact that a responsible Executive considered operating such a policy, the fact that even now many members of the teaching profession are prepared to withdraw their labour from school meals is something which the Minister can hardly feel very pleased about. Speaking for myself, I hope that when this Bill becomes law, as indeed it must, the teachers will return to their voluntary work on behalf of Britain. Let it be remembered that most of that voluntary work has never ceased. No one can make them do so. What they have withdrawn was, one tiny part—school savings—their own immense voluntary contribution to the nation's education. Having exhausted all constitutional processes against a proposed law, British people usually accept, even if they resent, the law of the land. After all, many people in England have to accept the other bad things which this Government are doing and console themselves in the thought that sooner or later—and it seems a very long time—a General Election must come. There is the consolation, as' the Evening Standard recently said in another context, that "There ain't gonna be another Tory Prime Minister."
But for the time being good will has vanished from the relationships between the teaching profession and the Ministry of Education. There are some good things in this Bill, but the Minister cannot claim credit for them. One group of them was in the Bill which was turned down by the last Parliament. The cost of them is certainly only a mere fraction of the new charge imposed on the teaching profession and local education authorities. As has even been conceded by the Under-Secretary of State for


Scotland who opened the debate, the other group of improvements has been the work of this House in Committee and would not have been in the Bill tonight if the Minister had been able to stampede the Bill through the House of Commons as he sought to do at the end of last year.
I should be out of order if I followed the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland in speaking on Amendments which we should like to have seen, such as one providing for an adequate widows' and orphans' pension scheme. The other main difference between this Bill and the former Bill is an acceptance of a greater share of actuarial liability, a liability which, as my hon. Friend pointed out, this Government will never have to meet. What I think is an alarming feature of the Bill is that it imposes on local education authorities, already burdened excessively by other actions of this Government, a new financial burden of an extra 1 per cent. In addition is an unknown financial burden in the actuarial liability which they will carry for everything beyond the date which the Government have so neatly pin-pointed and fixed in the Report stage tonight.
We cannot in this debate even congratulate the Minister on the handling of the Bill in Committee, although that is usually a pleasant task on Third Reading. I must say that I preferred to the methods of guillotine and gag which were practised earlier in Committee upstairs the Minister's attitude in later Committee stages when he became more reasonable and ended more pleasantly; but having got his own way on the heart of the Bill he could afford to be a little sweeter at the end. His idea of compromise was to give us none of the main improvements which we demanded upstairs.
It will be quite a time before the House debates another Teachers Superannuation Bill. What an opportunity has been lost of making a really worth while settlement and introducing some of the benefits for which the teaching profession has been asking for over a quarter of a century. Tonight we cannot even say that the excellent qualities so poetically narrated by the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland outweigh the blemishes which we have tried in vain to remove.
We cannot thank the Minister for letting us allow him to lick his bad Bill

into shape. It would have been pleasant had we been able to refer to the loyal support for the teachers from the benches opposite by those hon. Members who supported them in the last Parliament. Instead, the hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Jennings) has stood alone, and one congratulates him on his courage in standing alone on the Government side in denunciation of the Bill.

Mr. Chetwynd: He even sat alone for most of the time.

Dr. King: That is true. The teachers have to thank the Government benches for making this a party fight by leaving to the Opposition the defence of the teaching profession.
There is a strange fatality about Conservative Ministers of Education. I ventured to prophesy last November that just as the right hon. Gentleman had followed his predecessor in imposing a 6 per cent. contribution on the teaching profession, so he would inevitably follow in slashing the school building programme. I did not think he would do those things so close together.
The Minister began working well. He set up a working party of teachers and local education authorities. He began to negotiate between teachers and local education authorities some kind of compromise. When the local authorities and the teaching profession dug their heels in, the Minister's method was to use the local education authorities as a shield and to impose the charge that the teachers from the beginning had refused to accept. Despite its excellence and despite the advantages of detail in the Bill, it is a bad Bill and I shall vote against it tonight.

8.57 p.m.

Mr. I. J. Pitman: The hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) mentioned "big hearted David". Those of us who believe in some kind of spelling reform associate that with the word "Ask-y" and I join with the hon. Lady in being one of the "Ask-ys", which I think is really the correct association of Bighearted Arthurs, in hoping that everything possible will always be done for education and for those who devote their lives to the teaching of our children.
The hon. Lady, however, said that the gravamen of her charge against the Bill is


that the pensions are wholly inadequate. "Inadequacy" is a relative term, and we ought never to forget that a great many—in fact, by far the greatest majority—of the electors have even worse provision for pensions, and many of them have none at all. It is they upon whom, either as ratepayers or as taxpayers, will fall the need to meet the cost of teachers' pensions, and, therefore, there must at all times be a balance between what is desirable and what is possible.
The question of contributory pensions and whether there should be any contribution at all has been brought up. It has two interesting aspects. In the first place, I am on the whole inclined to join with my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in thinking there should be no contributions at all.
I think that that will be so, particularly in a period when there are constantly rising costs—when the cost of everything is on the way up.
There is a good deal to be said for the claim that the employer ought not in such circumstances make to it a condition of service that somebody should make a contribution in a currency which is one value at the time of making the contribution and will have, it may be supposed a quite unpredictable lower value at the end of the time—and the time may well be easily 70 years later—when an incoming teacher will stop drawing his pension in respect of the salary contributions which he first made on entry to the service. It seems to me, therefore, that in so far as it is predictable that costs will continue to go up and money down, it could be said that is undesirable to force any employee to pay any contribution.
Another interesting aspect of this matter is that I know that no member of the Civil Service would agree that if there is a non-contributory pension scheme the non-contributoriness of that scheme is not a factor in depressing the salary scale. In other words, it is undoubtedly true that the employer equates and consolidates both the contribution and the salary, and if there is no contribution or even a low contribution the salary tends to be lower than if it is the other way round, with the contribution at the maximum. In other words, both employers and employees add pension contributions to salary in looking at

remuneration. I imagine that that was the reason why the hon. Member for Aberavon (Mr. Cove) agreed with so many hon. Members on this side of the House when the Minister made his concession, very largely as a result of pressure from this side of the House, and postponed the operative date of the Bill to October, when the new salary scales would come into effect and so pay the contested increase of 1 per cent.

Mr. W. T. Williams: Would the hon. Member tell us how long an Amendment from this side of the House to postpone the date on which these payments were to be made was on the Order Paper before hon. Members opposite put any Amendment at all on the Order Paper?

Mr. Pitman: An Amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. Robert Jenkins) was on the Order Paper certainly a week or two before the Standing Committee began to sit. It will be within the recollection of those of us who attended the Standing Committee sittings that we did absolutely nothing except argue procedure for the whole of the time before Christmas, and that the Amendment was not reached until long after. Therefore, the period of Conservative pressure was not only reasonably long but was, moreover, more acceptable in the eyes of "Bighearted David" than was pressure from the other side of the House.
At any rate, the important consideration, and the point which I wish to make is that the hon. Member for Aberavon said in the Standing Committee when that concession was made that that gave the whole of the case in respect of that element of the Bill because it was perfectly clear that the teachers were going to receive an increase of salary which would cover the 1 per cent. increase in contribution which was to come into force at the very same date.
The issue of whether there has been a breach of faith and whether there was an argument in 1925 about the merits of an inscribed account or whether it should be an invested fund, has again been misunderstood today. What was then said referred not to the treatment of any deficiency, but to the security of investment in a fund. In those days we had just returned to the Gold Standard. Prices were coming down and there was


no fear whatever that there would be any substantial deficiency by reason of teachers' salaries going up on an inflationary scale, and making the account deficient. It was in that context that literally nobody raised the question of what would happen if there was a deficiency by reason of a potential inflation in the currency and a monetary increase in finishing salaries. I have read the proceedings of every stage, both in the other place and in this House, and I can assure the House that nobody raised it.
It has been this fact of monetary increases in finishing salaries which has thrown the whole concept of the fund out of the window. Where this Bill is such an immense improvement on the other Bill is that it introduces a final settlement of this inflationary change, whereas the earlier Bill left open for future argument at some future stage what would happen when yet another deficiency arising from further monetary increases would be shown up by the Government Actuary. Of course, that is a tremendous advantage in this Bill.
The reason why we on this side of the House vote for it is that we are now putting the teachers' superannuation future on a solid basis. If we were not passing this Bill tonight there could be objections by the public requiring the Treasury not to pay teachers' pensions because the 1925 Act was not being fully carried out. So, in putting this Bill on the Statute Book, we will be safe-guarding the future of teachers in an issue which is of the highest importance to them.
It has always seemed to me that there are three respects in which this Bill is such an improvement on the previous one. I have said that it no longer leaves the question in the air. Also it no longer is taxing new teachers for the benefit of arrears in respect of existing teachers. The House will remember that in the Bill which did not go through, the incoming teacher and future teachers were to be required to pay more than their fair share, and so to help in meeting the deficiency of the past. [Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen can laugh if they like, but they have only to turn up the letter sent by the National Union of Teachers to every hon. Member of this House where they will find this clearly stated.

Mr. M. Stewart: Would the hon. Gentleman consult the right hon. Lady the Member for Manchester, Moss Side (Dame Florence Horsbrugh) on this point?

Dame Florence Horsbrugh: No, I would prefer my hon. Friend not to do so. My lips are sealed.

Mr. Pitman: My right hon. Friend's lips are sealed, but I know that she has on her files the letter which I have on my files from the National Union of Teachers. That was the particular point printed in the blackest type and was a very sore one. If the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) doubts me, I can show him the correspondence—and will undertake publicly to withdraw if the circular from the National Union of Teachers is not found to be as I say.

Mr. Ross: What has that got to do with this Bill?

Mr. Pitman: The reference is that this Bill is a better one than the Bill which we did not pass previously.

Dr. King: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves that point, does he agree that under both Bills young and old teachers pay exactly the same?

Mr. Pitman: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will refresh his memory from the actual papers which I will see that he sees, as well as the right hon. Member for South Shields. I undertake—

Mr. Ede: I have not asked to see the papers. I do not want to see anything.

Mr. Pitman: The two real enemies of the teacher are inflation and the penury of the finance of local authorities. [An HON. MEMBER: "And the Government."] Inflation makes finishing salaries out of line with past contributions and makes it extremely difficult for teachers' pensions to be kept going. The other enemy of the teachers is our system of local government finance which, being based on rates, is equated to rents which have been stabilised since 1918. What hon. Members opposite ought to do is to help in the improvement of local government finance so that it is not hamstrung and so that the employer of the teacher need not be in such dire straits looking about for the last penny on every issue.
It is recognised in the House that the National Union of Teachers has done a first-class job in bringing forward the grievances of teachers in respect of not only the current pensions Measure, but of the whole conditions of service. However, I think the time has now come when it might well settle down and operate this Measure and then go for the fundamental things which really concern it, being satisfied that it has got security behind it in respect of the pensions scheme.

9.12 p.m.

Mr. Moss: As the clock beats out
… the little lives of men …
I shall be extremely brief. I shall not follow the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Pitman) into the question of the standards by which to judge pensions schemes. It seems to me that he bases his opinion on the jingle:
Here we suffer grief and pain.
Across the road it's just the same,
But very much worse next door.
Nor should we judge the Bill by comparison with the last Measure.
The Secretary of State for Scotland said that the Bill had had a long and troublesome passage and that it had emerged a better Bill—

Mr. Ross: It was one of our three Joint Under-Secretaries of State.

Mr. Moss: I agree that it has emerged a better Bill than it was when it started. The hon. Gentleman went on to give a long list of the minor improvements which will make life sweeter for teachers. He omitted the major improvement which was referred to in The Times Educational Supplement of 2nd March as the major concession of the Committee stage. That was simply the postponement of the Bill until later this year. We do not postpone a good thing; we postpone a bad thing.
I will try briefly to state our objections to the Bill even though it is a better one now, always remembering that the circumstances of our times demand and justify a generosity towards teachers in that we need teachers in greater numbers and of better quality for the enormous tasks that have to be performed in this country.
First of all, it is not the kind of Bill that teachers want, and because of that it has to be forced upon them. Throughout the

progress of the Bill we have had to bear constantly in mind that it is being imposed upon the teaching profession. That is a major political error. Secondly, it increases teachers' contributions to 6 per cent. at a time when such an increase is least justified and when it is bound to be regarded as a cut in salary. Therefore, it seems to me that we are right to oppose the Third Reading of the Bill on the ground that it is a Bill that the teachers do not want and that it discourages teachers at a time when the need for them is very great indeed.

9.15 p.m.

Mr. Jennings: Earlier in the day I said that the House well knew what my attitude to the Bill was. I am very sorry that the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) is not in his place for the Third Reading, because he would have been amply rewarded for showing care and solicitude for my voice by the fact that I am at last on my feet today.
As I said, the House well knew what my attitude to the Bill was and I want to say immediately that that attitude has not changed. I do not wish to deploy the reasons. I deployed them sufficiently on Second Reading. I objected to the Bill, and I still, do because of the principle of the payment of the 6 per cent. contribution. On 1918 we were promised a scheme free from contribution; a compulsory levy came in 1923, and it was legalised in 1925 by Act of Parliament. Now we have the attempt to get a 6 per cent. contribution. My second reason is the omission from the Bill of an adequate and efficient scheme for widows and orphans.
The Bill is vastly improved from what it was at Second Reading and for that I am grateful. We are told that all these ills of the 6 per cent. contribution are surmounted, because the date for the imposition of the 6 per cent. contribution and the date of the salary increases are synchronised. I have never recognised the principle that the two could be dealt with together. I have never recognised the principle that the Burnham Committee will accept an extra 1 per cent. contribution from teachers' salaries as an adequate reason for discussing a salary increase. For those reasons, I still oppose the Bill and I will go into the Division Lobby against the Government on the Third Reading.

9.17 p.m.

Mr. Chetwynd: I am sure the whole House will wish to compliment the hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Jennings) upon his courage in stating his convictions as he has done tonight. After his speech, there is very little more that need be said in condemnation of the Bill. At this stage we all recognise that it is a sordid bargain between the Minister and his back benchers in which he has given some amelioration of the previous Bill in order to get his way with the 6 per cent. contribution. Nothing can disguise from the teachers the fact that in October instead of in April they will be paying 6 per cent. instead of 5 per cent. of their salaries. If that is not a reduction in salary, I do not know what is.
In return for that, teachers are supposed to have additional benefits, but they are benefits which are long overdue and very small. They have a pension scheme which does not meet the case at all, which does not yet exist and which can come about only as a result of a long process of negotiation. There is the wiping out of the actuarial deficiency, which never was the responsibility of teachers and which we believe should not at this stage be made the responsibility of the local authorities. There is only the delay of six months.
These few improvements have been gained because the teachers have been making a song and dance and it is absolutely certain that if they had not made that song and dance when the Bill was introduced, there would have been none of these so-called improvements. The Minister has missed a golden opportunity to give a dynamic lead to the teaching profession in its long and hazardous march towards a better professional status. I very much regret that, because he had the good will of the profession at the beginning of his term of office. That good will has now gone.
I cannot accept his linking of the increase in contribution with the increase of pay. What is certain is that there will be an increase in contribution. What is not at the moment certain is what the increase in pay will be. I agree with the teachers at the meeting in Central Hall when they displayed a placard which the Minister quotes in his own favour. It said:
What the teachers want are more shekels and less Eccles.

The result of the Bill will be fewer shekels than the teachers are entitled to receive.
My final word is this. I hope the teachers will derive a lesson from the way they have been treated over this Measure and will act accordingly in the future. The Minister has upset every interest in the teaching profession, the teachers, the local authorities, and all concerned. I hope the House will reject the Third Reading of this Bill tonight.

9.21 p.m.

Mr. M. Stewart: We are now at the last stage in the unhappy history of this Bill. If one were to try and relate its unhappy history, I suppose one would have to begin by referring to the fact that it is an attempt to do something which was attempted rather more than a year ago in the previous Bill on these lines introduced by the Government but, more prudently, withdrawn.
The proverb says that fools rush in where angels fear to tread. How much either of the appellations in the proverb are applicable respectively to the right hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Lady the Member for Moss Side (Dame Florence Horsbrugh), I must leave the House to judge. Having resolved to rush in. the right hon. Gentleman opened the Second Reading debate on the Bill. It was remarkable during that debate how little support the Bill received from any of the back benches opposite. Such speeches as there were from those back benches on that December day were either coldly pedantic, icily critical or plainly hostile to the Government's intention.
It was not long before the Government found that not only did they lack any warmth of support from their own benches but that they had aroused the hostility of the teaching profession. I commend to the Minister's attention what was said on this matter by my hon. Friend the Member for Itchen (Dr. King). He said that the Minister should not underrate the degree of hostility which he has caused. If, out of patience and public spirit, the teaching profession have decided not to proceed to some of the very powerful sanctions which they could have employed if they wished, I hope that the Minister will not quote, and none of his supporters will quote, that as any evidence of the reconciling of the profession to the Bill.
If they should try to pray in their aid the moderation of the teaching profession, they will be inviting the teaching profession to listen to wilder and less moderate counsels.
The Minister next attempted to rush the whole proceedings through the Standing Committee. Some of us remember very well a rather deplorable meeting of that Committee before Christmas. So anxious was the Government to rush the Bill through that they were prepared to hold that meeting of the Committee although the simple requisite of an adequate room for the Committee to meet in had not been provided.
Then, after the Committee had been at work on the Bill for some time, the Government announced that they would do what they had previously said was impossible, namely, have the Bill discussed in two Committees, the ordinary Standing Committee and the Scottish Committee simultaneously.
Having changed its mind, one would have hoped, for the better, on that point, they then proceeded to make that divided treatment of the Bill—as my hon. Friend the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire (Miss Herbison) has pointed out—an excuse for rushing the Scottish part of the Bill and for trying to play off the two Committees one against the other, using in each Committee the argument that the business must be hurried on because the other Committee had already dealt with some point or other. My hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North dealt with that, and pointed out how ill this assorts with the claim, or promise, of the Government that they would try to see that Scottish affairs were properly discussed by hon. Members representing Scottish constituencies.
Then, as the discussions in the Committee proceeded, the Government had to change their plans about the Bill. To begin with, it had been thought imperative to make this Bill law by 31st March of this year. It required only a little appreciation of the treatment so liberally provided by my right hon. and hon. Friends during the Committee discussions to make the Minister realise that that necessity was not quite so pressing as he had imagined, and the date of the operation of the Bill was altered.
I think that it was at about that stage that two of the Government supporters, in

the happy phrase of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) decided that it was better to accept office, even in the present Administration, than to continue with the distasteful task of being members of a Committee that was rushing this Bill through. Meanwhile, the way in which the Government had handled the matter—first in one Committee and then in two Committees, first with the idea of it becoming law in March and later with the idea of it becoming law in October—obliged them to reconsider the Money Resolution on which all Committee discussions on the Bill had been based. Having first reconsidered the Money Resolution and produced one new Money Resolution, they considered it again and produced another—and we on this side of the House had something to say about that.
Then we found that it was necessary to recommit the Bill in respect of certain Clauses, and Amendments—Government Amendments—continued to drop gently on to the Notice Paper day by day until almost the last day before the Bill came before the House for Report and Third Reading.
One might have thought that, with all this elaborate if rather inept gestation, the Bill would be a really good and well thought out Measure now that it has at last arrived at the Third Reading stage. But no. If one looks at every point at which an attempt has been made to improve the Bill, one is left with a feeling of being tantalised; with a feeling of disappointment; with a feeling that the Government have attempted something under pressure and, either through lack of will or ability, have botched the job.
For example, there is a Clause in the Bill about widows, orphans, and dependants. In its first form, parts of that Clause were almost unintelligible, or if they were intelligible, they did not express the meaning that the Government intended. We had to have Amendments this afternoon to make clearer, as was admitted by the Government, what was really the intention of the Government. One has only to look at that Clause about widows and orphans to say immediately to oneself, "What a pity that the Government, when introducing a Bill containing a Clause about a widows', orphans' and dependants' pension scheme, should


not have seen to it that there was a scheme worth putting into the Bill."
We know the excuse of the Minister for that, or perhaps one should say excuses, because they have been almost as multitudinous as the number of Money Resolutions introduced during the course of this Bill. What did he tell us during the Second Reading debate? He said, "I ask hon. Members to let me go on trying to negotiate." I submit to the House that anyone who listened to those words was bound to come to the conclusion that the Minister—not merely the particular person holding that office at the moment—but that the Minister was anxious to negotiate with local authorities, and that difficulties with the local authorities were what really stood in the way. But when the Bill reached the Committee stage it became quite clear that even if the local authorities had been prepared to negotiate, the Government were not. It is impossible for anyone to read what the Minister said upon those two occasions and to feel that he was being really candid with the House when he expressed what was in his mind.
Again, it is a good thing to have a Clause about "buying in" employment of value to teachers. But why, if we have that Clause, must we also have that tiresome subsection (5), which the Government find it so difficult to justify? It is also good to have a Clause which allows teachers in independent schools to come into the pension scheme, but why could not the Government have gone a little further along the lines of an Amendment which I proposed during the Committee stage?
One has only to look at all the improvements made in the Bill to say to oneself, "If there had been either the will or the skill, this Bill might have been so much better." One feels that the real purpose of the Bill—to which I shall turn in a moment—is to take money out of the pockets of teachers and local authorities, and that the conciliatory parts of the Bill are ill-prepared and stuck in here and there like extravagant bits of icing upon an ill-baked cake.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the lack of Government support which was so apparent during the Second Reading debate has been equally apparent in the debate upon the Third Reading. I have

been present throughout this debate except for periods totalling slightly less than thirty minutes, and I have carefully observed the help which has been given to the Government by hon. Members opposite. There was the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Pitman), who explained to us the reasons why he thought that a non-contributory scheme would be a really good thing. As a defence of a Bill which proposes to raise contributions from 5 per cent. to 6 per cent., an exposition of the case for having contributions of 0 per cent. is not really very helpful—admirable as the exposition was in itself. The hon. Member for Bath also said that he thought it was an excellent thing that the coming into force of the Bill had been postponed. That is not exactly the kind of testimonial that I should want for a Bill, if I were the Minister introducing it to the House.
The hon. Member for Walton (Mr. K. Thompson) praised the Minister, as we all did, for having inserted a Clause about monthly payments. That made the Minister hope that he had a real friend, but something else was to come from the hon. Member to which I shall refer shortly. Another hon. Member, whose constituency I am afraid I forget, said, "Hear, hear," when the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland was moving a drafting Amendment. The hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Jennings) showed that all the arguments which had been introduced between the Second Reading debate and now had failed to change his opinion that this was a bad Bill, and that he was going to vote against it. Then came the other remark of the hon. Member for Walton. We have said some unkind things about the Minister, but I do not think that any of us has told him to go and search his conscience.

Mr. Ede: We do not think that he has one.

Mr. Stewart: That has been the rather shoddy manner in which the Bill has been not so much passed through Parliament as trailed through it.
What does the Bill do? I have deliberately restricted my comments upon that question, since so much has already been said upon the main arguments. It is worth while, however, to notice that it makes certain minor improvements for


teachers. Nobody denies that. But a great many had to be made under pressure, and nobody will suggest that they are of such a nature that, if one said to the teaching profession, "Now, here is the unpleasant part of the Bill, and here are the improvements; do you think that it is worth while?" that profession would give any answer but an emphatic "No."
Not merely the most recently joined and least well-informed members of the profession, but the solid, responsible officials, with the whole weight and responsibility of their past behind them, would say quite plainly that the minor improvements in the Bill are no justification for its main objects.
Then the Bill does that for which the Government have given themselves much credit. Rarely have a Government given themselves so much credit as we have heard them claim during the various stages of the Bill. It has been the most remarkable performance of that kind since the Emperor Caligula awarded himself a triumph for a pretended victory over the waters of the English Channel.
What is this writing off of liability? The liability was the Government's from the beginning; it is important to make that clear. I want to pray in aid not a partisan of ours, not an unthinking zealot from the teaching profesion, but the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Sir R. Boothby) who said in the Scottish Standing Committee, on this matter of where the liability lay:
I came to the conclusion that the observations made by the then Minister for Education, Lord Eustace Percy, now Lord Percy of Newcastle, to the late Sir Henry Craik and the hon. Member for Aberavon (Mr. Cove) did constitute a pledge on behalf of the Government that the rate of contribution would not be raised in future.… I still interpret it as a pledge."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Scottish Standing Committee, 14th February, 1956; c. 105–6.]
That is so. It is impossible to read what Lord Percy said on that occasion and read into it any other meaning.
The Government will argue that he was talking about whether we ought to have a fund or an account. That was the particular peg on which his statement was hung, but because he said a thing in that connection cannot alter the content of what he said. The burden of his argument was that for a long period

ahead, and until conditions about the payment of pensions had been realised, which have not been realised yet and are not likely to be realised for many years, there ought to be no question of raising the rate of contribution.
That is why we say that when the Government talk about writing off the liability they are merely saying, "We accept a liability which has been ours all the time." That is no excuse for saying, "We accept a past liability which is an obligation which we have to honour, so we are justified in pushing off on to somebody else a future liability which is really ours."
The Government are pushing off on to local authorities and to teachers a burden that should properly be borne by the central Government. The teachers are told that they can get it back through the Burnham negotiations. Is the Minister sincere in that? If so, it means that the whole of the burden which the Government are pushing from their shoulders will come back on to the local authorities. We say that there is nothing in present-day local authority finance to make it either just or sensible to shift part of the cost of education from the central towards the local government.
The Government are not, as they are trying to represent, engaged in heroically handling a grave situation which sooner or later would have threatened teachers' pensions. The legal liability to pay these pensions is, under present legislation, where it has always been, on the central Government. That is the situation. Instead of a heroic handling of a situation we have, on the one hand a smug assumption by the Government of virtue because they are meeting part of a liability the whole of which is really theirs, and on the other an attempt to dodge a future liability and an attempt to make that transaction palatable by concessions most of which have had to be extracted from the Government, and all of which will be regarded by those to whom they are offered as quite inadequate in return for the injury and insult that are being offered to the teaching profession.
We ought to emphasise that one of the main grounds for rejecting the Bill is that the deliberate singling out of teachers in this fashion is taken to be a


measure of the Government's general contempt for popular education. [HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."] Hon. Members opposite have had plenty of opportunity during the afternoon to tell us why the Government have introduced the Bill. They have not been able to put forward any suggestions, and I am now putting forward mine. I say that the manner in which the Bill has been trailed through is an affront to Parliament, and the matter which it contains is an affront to education.

9.41 p.m.

Sir D. Eccles: I wondered if there would be any new argument put forward against the central proposition in the Bill that the teachers' contribution and the local authority's contribution should be raised by 1 per cent. There are no new arguments, so all that I can do is to restate, as well as I can in the time available, what we feel about the old ones.
Four criticisms have been put forward by hon. Members opposite. First, they said that Clause 2, which raises the contribution, was unnecessary, secondly, that it was a breach of faith, thirdly, that it was treating the teachers worse than other people—picking upon them—and fourthly, that it was a cut in salary. I do not think I need spend much time on the proposition that it is unnecessary. We have heard from time to time insinuations that actuarial calculations are all very unreal, and that because the account has a credit balance we might have postponed this Measure for some years. I do not think that leading members of the teaching profession will support that.
The fact is that the actuaries are the basis of the whole of the British insurance industry, and have a great reputation. It is no good one profession thinking that it can make a case by denigrating another. The actuaries have told us that, leaving on one side the whole of the deficiency which the Exchequer has to bear by itself, a total contribution of 12 per cent. is necesary as from 1st April next to support the known benefits. I believe that is really not in dispute. The working party went into these calculations very carefully. Therefore, I propose to dismiss all the criticism that it is unnecessary to increase the income from one source or another.
The next argument is that it is a breach of faith. It is said that to ask the teaching profession to pay more than 5 per cent. out of the 12 per cent. which is now necessary breaks faith with pledges given in the past. That was repeated just now. I completely disagree, and so does legal opinion which we have consulted many times, with the view put forward by the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart).
The 1925 Act contains no specific provisions for dealing with a deficiency. It implies that should such a deficiency be revealed, it has to be met by increased contributions from teachers or employers or both. It makes no distinction. I will read the relevant words of Section 15 (1) of the Act. Since I am charged with breach of faith, I think that I should make some reply. The Section states:
… the Treasury shall cause an actuarial inquiry to be made for the purpose of determining whether on the basis of the said account the contributions payable under this Part of this Act are sufficient or more than sufficient, or less than sufficient, to support the benefits payable thereunder in respect of those contributions.
All pension schemes of this kind have in them a safeguard for the members of the scheme in the shape of periodic valuations. There is no point in arranging in a scheme, as was done in 1925, for the Government Actuary to look at the figures once so often if, when those valuations reveal that the income is not sufficient to build the account up to meet the known liabilities, nothing is done about it. In that Act there is nothing to say that it is the Exchequer's business to carry the whole deficiency.
Then the hon. Gentleman opposite quotes Lord Eustace Percy, and quotes my hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeenshire (Sir R. Boothby) as saying that Lord Eustace Percy meant what Lord Eustace Percy has said he did not mean. I prefer to trust Lord Eustace Percy rather than an interpretation put upon him.

Mr. Ross: He was in the House at the time.

Sir D. Eccles: He was President of the Board of Education, a man who is most respected in the teaching profession and chairman of the Burnham Committee. It is quite clear that what he was referring to related to the question of whether


there should be a fund or an account, and I believe him.
I think that I can best show the position we were in when contemplating the Clauses of this Bill by giving a short recital of the state of the teachers' account as it is today. The income of the account today in respect of England and Wales is £26 million a year. Of this, £18 million is derived from the 10 per cent. on the Teachers' salaries—5 per cent. from teachers and 5 per cent. from local authorities. The sum of £8 million is the 3½ per cent. interest—which is a very favourable rate—accruing on the present credit balance in the account. That makes £26 million. The Actuary shows in his calculation that we require £40 million a year if the account is to be built up to meet the known liabilities; so we are £14 million short.
It is our duty to find that £14 million. For the sake of the teachers it must be found from somewhere. Under this Bill an amount of £10 million is found by adding a notional capital sum to the balance in the Account. This is interest at 3½ per cent. on the sum added to the account and wholly borne by the taxpayer. That leave £4 million, and that is found as to £2 million by the employers—grant-aided by the Exchequer—and as to £2 million by the teachers, both paying 1 per cent. more. Therefore, out of £14 million additional revenue required to make the account solvent as the liabilities are known today £2 million is asked for from the teachers. That is not a breach of faith.
I now turn to the next point. Is it worth it? What do the teachers get for being asked to pay £2 million out of the £14 million? They get a very substantial amount. I would stress first Clause 4 of the Bill, because that Clause does what the teachers have wanted all the time and have never had before—statutory relief from finding any part of any future deficiency. This is a very valuable change in the teachers' pension scheme. We can see how valuable it is this very day.
This very day the Secretary of State for Scotland has signed an order for a 7 per cent, interim increase in Scottish teachers' salaries. Clause 4 begins to operate. The result of adding 7 per cent—which is, after all, only an interim increase in teachers' salaries—is that when the

account is next valued the employers in Scotland—the Scottish local authorities—will have to pay 7 per cent; they will have to pay 1 per cent. more, because that is the result of raising teachers' salaries with the corresponding increase in their pensions.
One would suppose that it cannot be very long before the English teachers and the Welsh teachers also get some increase in salary. As soon as they do, the benefit of Clause 4 will begin to operate. Something had to be given to get Clause 4. That was the bones of the bargain, that the account should start on 1st April next with 12 per cent. evenly divided and, in return for that, the employers should take on all future deficiencies. It may well be that they will be paying 8 per cent., 9 per cent., even 10 per cent., while the teachers continue to pay 6 per cent. That is safeguarded in the Bill.
A wide range of minor benefits have been mentioned. I very much doubt if any teacher, when he carefully looks at this Bill, would say that he would willingly go back to 5 per cent. and have no security in future and none of these many small, but—in their cumulative effect—attractive changes in their favour.
The next argument that is advanced by the teachers is, "Whatever contributions are necessary, why pick on us to pay any more?" They say that no other body of public servants in service has been asked to pay an increased contribution for their pensions. When one looks at that argument one sees that it turns against the teachers because it draws attention to the fact that in putting it forward the teachers are not asking for equal treatment for themselves, but for discrimination very heavily in their favour compared with any other body of public servants.
The teachers fail to recognise the unique position of their pension account. The Actuary told us as long ago as 1935 that the 10 per cent. was insufficient and that a deficiency was building up. Soon afterwards, in 1937, contributions to the local government pensions scheme were increased from 5 per cent. to 6 per cent. It is of course true that the increase applied to new entrants only, but why was that? It was because there was a very small deficiency at that time and, what is much more important, the 1922 Act, under which they were operating, had


already placed the responsibility for deficiencies on the employer. Nothing of that kind is in the Teachers' Act.

Mr. Ross: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that that was pointed out at the time by Willie Graham, the former hon. Member for Edinburgh, East. When he drew attention to this suggestion, which the Government now claim is a vice which has wrecked the scheme from the start, the then Government proclaimed as a virtue?

Sir D. Eccles: That may be, but the fact remains that the teachers have had their pensions more cheaply than local government servants for the past 20 years. For example, the teacher retiring in 10 years' time will have paid in rather less than one-third of the benefit he will get. He can take off his hat to other local government servants and say, "I have got my pension and lump sum considerably cheaper than yours." I do not think there is any case whatever for saying that they have had discrimination against them; rather the opposite.
Of course the fundamental objection is that this is a cut in salary. The Government have always recognised that, and, as an hon. Member opposite said, the poster which pleased the teachers most said, "More shekels, less Eccles." That represents the teachers' point of view. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I do not mind that in the least, because they are going to get more shekels. Al] the attempts made by hon. Members opposite to say that the pension has to be treated as something entirely separate from the salary are entirely unrealistic. In point of fact all professional men and women when considering the financial advantages of their job consider both the pension rate and the salary together.
That is why we postponed the date of the Bill, because it would be a hardship for the teachers to have to pay 1 per cent. more, having regard to the rise in the cost of living, before they get their three-yearly salary increase. That has been arranged for. The Bill has been postponed and hon. Members opposite know very well that the letters and the agitation in the country ceased directly this was known.
I want to say a word about widows and orphans. Hon. Members may not have

realised—it is my fault for not telling them—the extent of the repercussions. Such a scheme would have to be extended to local government and National Health Service employees. There are 120,000 men teachers and 530,000 men in the service of local government and the National Health Service. I calculate that any contribution put up by the Government towards a widows' and orphans' scheme if extended to these other bodies would cost three and a half times the amount needed for teachers alone. That is a much larger financial repercussion than we had realised.
To those who, like myself, feel that one day a contributory widows' and orphans' scheme must come, I would say that in present financial circumstances I think it is better for the teachers that such money as is going should be concentrated on their direct interests than that we should have to go through this very long process not knowing exactly where it would end.

Mr. G. Thomas: Is the Minister indicating that such a widows' and orphans' scheme is bound to be linked with local government and the Health Service?

Sir D. Eccles: It would be very hard—and I think hon. Members opposite would see to it that we thought it was very hard—to bring in a scheme of this kind for one section of local government employees and not for the others.
I want finally to echo the appeal of the hon. Member for Itchen (Dr. King). Now that we have been through the constitutional processes of getting the Bill to its Third Reading, I hope the teachers will realise that the time they have been spending thinking about the 1 per cent. has been out of all proportion to the importance of the 1 per cent. They have much bigger things to go for. All round, the Government are increasing the scale of education. We must have the teachers with us in that. They care about it as much as we do. When one thinks that 1 per cent. is what all this trouble has been about and that my right hon. Friend has today given plus 7 per cent. as an interim increase in salary, it does appear to be out of proportion.

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 285, Noes 235.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Orders of the Day — MINING SUBSIDENCE (RATEABLE VALUE)

10.10 p.m.

The Minister of Fuel and Power (Mr. Aubrey Jones): I beg to move,
That the Draft Coal-Mining (Subsidence) (Rateable Value) Order, 1956, a copy of which was laid before this House on 8th March, be approved.
The Order has been made necessary by the rating changes which take effect in England and Wales at the beginning of next month. The House will recall that the Coal-Mining (Subsidence) Act, 1950, provided for the payment of compensation to the owners of small houses where damage has been caused by mining subsidence. The Act defines small houses as houses having a rateable value of £32 or under.
Section 1 (2) of that Act empowers me to amend the £32 in the light of rating changes, and that is what I am doing by this Order. I am amending a figure within the framework of the existing Act. That being the case, it will, I hope, be appreciated by hon. Members that I am bound by the spirit and the intention of the Act. The Act may be a good one or a bad one, but that is not relevant to the Order. I am a prisoner of the Act.
There are those who will contend that the 1950 Act should have gone much further, and that compensation for mining subsidence should be payable not only in respect of small houses but to a far wider range of people. I should be out of order if I were on this occasion to go into those wider questions. All I will say about them is this. In answer to the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Swingler) a few days ago, I said that I hoped to be able to make a statement on the subject shortly after the Easter Recess, and I repeat that hope this evening.
The Order substitutes £50 for the old figure of £32. I owe it to the House to explain how the new figure was reached. Rating assessments in mining areas have gone up in varying degrees, the average increase being rather over 40 per cent., which means that the new figure to correspond to the old figure of £32 would come to between £45 and £50. I have decided to round off the figure at £50, and the local authority associations agree with that figure.
There is a feature of the 1950 Act which is very relevant to the Order, and I should like to draw attention to it. In defining a small house, it employed a very uncertain measuring-rod—rateable value. Rating values change not only as part of a general change, such as we now have, but also for particular reasons. The rateable value of a house may go up or it may go down. When for any particular reason the rateable value of a house goes up, the house may be carried outside the limits of the Act, and when the rateable value goes down, the house may come within the Act. It has been part of the experience of the last six years that houses have in this way moved in and out of the ambit of the Act.
This passage inwards and outwards is repeated as a result of the Order. Before the newest rating changes, rating valuations were on different bases in different parts of the country. Those valuations are now on a uniform basis. But it will be apparent to hon. Members that by comparison with the new basis, some houses were previously under-valued and some over-valued. Those which were previously under-valued tend, as a result of these changes, to be carried outside the limits of the Act and those which were previously over-valued tend to come within the Act.
This movement inwards and outwards works out like this: until this moment the Act has covered about 3 million houses of which 99·9 per cent. will still be


covered as a result of the new figure; but 0·1 per cent., that is 3,000 houses, will be carried outside the scope of the Act. About 4,000 houses—I cannot give the exact figure—will be brought within the scope of the Act for the first time.
Hon. Members will doubtless ask me why it is that I exclude anybody and why I did not choose a figure which would allow everybody previously covered to continue to enjoy protection. That is a very pertinent question. My answer is that to have covered everybody previously covered, I should have had to raise the figure to such a level that I would at the same time have brought in many largish houses, which it was not the intention of the original Act to cover. It is in this sense, as I explained earlier, that I am a real prisoner of the Act. To have brought in this large number of largish houses would, in short, have been a plain illegality. That was made perfectly clear by the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mr. P. Noel-Baker), when moving the Second Reading of the Coal-Mining (Subsidence) Bill in April, 1950. He then said, prophesying the debate now taking place:
If the rateable value of the dwellings we seek to cover should be changed by the revaluation which is now going on, then by Clause 1 the Minister will have the power to change by Order these figures, £32 and £52. Of course, he would only do so to ensure that the same classes of property were still covered."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 25th April, 1950; Vol. 474, c. 794.]
The expression was not "the same properties," but "the same classes of properties." That is what I have endeavoured to do.

Mr. James Harrison: The Minister has talked about the normal practice of single properties coming under the umbrella of the Act and going out. We have an example of this kind where a property was outside the limit of £32, but, owing to subsidence and revaluation, is now within the £50 limit, because of the reduction of valuation through subsidence, subsidence compensation having been refused. In such a case, would that individual property now be eligible for compensation for subsidence?

Mr. Jones: I should have thought so. This is an inherent feature of the Act. If at the beginning a house with a rateable value of £40 suffered mining subsidence, and the rateable value was brought

down to £30, and, thus, under the provisions of the Act, became eligible for compensation, I should have thought, subject to these rating changes, that such a house would still be eligible.
This movement inwards and outwards is the result of two things, firstly, the uncertain measuring rod of rateable value, and, secondly, this attempt to distinguish between the small house and the not-so-small house. I am most sensible of the sense of grievance which may be felt by those who were formerly protected and who now no longer find themselves protected. In order to help them, I have come to a certain arrangement with the National Coal Board. It is a provisional arrangement which should help them until the end of this year.
Since it is important that I should phrase the offer of the National Coal Board with all the exactitude I can, I hope that the House will forgive me if I read this particular passage. I am authorised by the National Coal Board to say that it "will consider sympathetically applying the provisions of the Act ex gratia to applications for compensation for houses whose rateable value before April 1st was not more than £32 on account of damage which can be proved to have occurred and be due to mining subsidence before December 31st, 1956, provided that the damage is reported and the application made before that date ". In other words, even in the case of houses now carried outside the scope of the Act, those houses will continue to enjoy a measure of protection until the end of this year.
In drawing attention to these inherent features of the 1950 Act, I hope that I have shown my awareness of the defect of that Act. It is a defect that houses should move in and out of its ambit. Conscious of that defect, I feel obliged to have regard to it in the review which I am making and in the statement which I hope to make to the House soon after the Easter Recess. Pending that statement, I should like to express the hope that the House tonight will approve this Order so that the protection given by the Act to so many people will continue to be enjoyed after the end of this month.

10.22 p.m.

Mr. Harold Neal: I should like to preface my remarks by congratulating the Minister upon what I believe is his first speech from the Front


Bench. Having memories of my own baptism of fire, I consider that he has reason to feel proud upon his entry into his more responsible rôle in the Parliamentary area.
The Opposition affords qualified support to this Order. We have grown accustomed to accepting crumbs from the Tory table; we do not propose to divide the House. We have, none the less, some very serious objections to make to the inadequacy of the Order.
Subsidence arising from coal mining has been a serious social problem for many years. So long as we dig coal this problem will remain. When a seam of coal is extracted, the average subsidence of the surface is two-thirds of the thickness of the seam removed; in other words, if a seam of coal six feet thick is extracted, the normal subsidence of the surface is four feet. With the best will in the world, subsidence cannot be entirely eliminated. All the accumulated wisdom of mining engineers cannot provide a complete solution to the problem. New methods of automatic stowage underground, blocking up the wastes which occur through the extraction of the coal, mitigate but do not eliminate entirely the surface damage which arises.
Our ancient common law gave the owner of land the surface and absolute rights of possession of all minerals under the surface. He could sever the minerals from the land and sell them to other people to work. Sometimes land was sold having a right to compensation for surface damage. In many cases no such rights were included in the conveyances. With the passage of time, many owners of land had no rights for an appreciable distance below the surface, with the consequence that damage arising from coal mining left them with no claim when disaster befell them.
Successive Royal Commissions have considered this problem without avail. The Act of 1938 nationalised the coal. The Act of 1946 nationalised the working of coal. That made the problem much more simple when subsidence engaged the attention of the Turner Committee in 1949. In 1950, as the Minister has rightly said, the Labour Government introduced legislation. It was the first legislation in our long history as a coal mining nation to begin the task of afford-

ing justice to the unfortunate owners of property who previously had no redress when the calamities of subsidence overtook them. But it was only a beginning. It was an attempt to ease the shoe where it pinched most.
The Act of 1950 was designed primarily to help the owners of dwelling-houses who belonged to the hardest hit among property owners. By that Act the owners of dwelling-houses—

Mr. Gerald Nabarro: On a point of order Mr. Deputy-Speaker. Are we allowed to widen the scope of the debate upon this relatively short and simple Order into a general debate on the coal mining industry and its history since coal was first mined?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew): No. The scope of this Order is very narrow. It simply raises the rateable value of a house to which compensation applies from £32 to £50. I was hoping that the hon. Gentleman would soon address himself to that point. He cannot go into the whole history of subsidence.

Mr. Neal: I apologise if I have overstepped the bounds of order, but I thought I was entitled to mention the Act from which this Order derives. It was the Act of 1950 to which the Minister referred, and surely there should be some equality in these matters. The Minister referred to the Act of 1950—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I did not stop the hon. Member from referring to the Act, but he was out of order in going into the details of subsidence.

Mr. Neal: I was proceeding to say that the Act of 1950 laid it down that the owners of dwelling-houses with a rateable value not exceeding £32 in England and Wales and £52 in Scotland were afforded the right to claim compensation for mining subsidence, even though there was no such entitlement in the deeds of their land.
The Order before us relates to this rateable value figure. The increase in the rateable value of a dwelling-house, the owner of which will be entitled to claim compensation, is necessitated by the revised rateable values in England


and Wales in accordance with the Local Government Act, 1948. The previous maximum of £32 in 1950 is now increased to £50 by this Order. It would be interesting to know on what calculation this modest increase is justified. To many people it seems to be a sticking plaster for a volcano. Has the Minister conferred with local authorities on this subject?

Mr. Aubrey Jones: indicated assent.

Mr. Neal: I am glad that the Minister nods his head in confirmation that he has.

Mr. Jones: I would remind the hon. Gentleman that I did say that the figure was agreed by the local authorities' associations.

Mr. Neal: I apologise, but I did not hear the Minister say that.
I am glad to know that the right hon. Gentleman has conferred with local authorities, but even if he has done so, we on this side of the House are not prepared to stand sponsors for all that the local authorities' associations delegation may have agreed with the Minister.
Newspapers say that the assessment increase, averaged over the country, is 73 per cent. It is admitted that there are many business premises included in that figure, but at the same time this increase is only 56¼ per cent. and I have heard of dwelling-houses the rateable value of which has been increased by 100 per cent. Can the Minister tell us what relief is afforded in such cases? Under this Order many of those now entitled to claim compensation will be excluded, and their houses can crumble about their heads without any hope of redress. The cost of repairs to them will be infinitely larger when this Order comes into operation than it was in 1950.
Not long ago the Minister of Housing and Local Government interested himself in this problem and, believing that seeing for oneself was the sovereign remedy for ignorance, he came to the Midlands to see the effect of mining subsidence. It was a much publicised tour; adequate appreciation was given everywhere the Minister went for the interest that he had taken in the problem.

Throughout his peregrinations in the Midlands he left a very pleasant impression; the expectations of householders and local authorities were legitimately aroused by that visit. Then everybody thought that something would be done in respect of those houses that had not been included in the 1950 Act.
Is this Order really the best that can be done by the combined efforts of the Minister of Housing and Local Government and the Minister of Fuel and Power? What relief does this offer to towns like Swadlincote in the division of my right hon. Friend the Member for Belper (Mr. G, Brown), a town of modern ruin, where houses of all degrees of assessment are affected by mining subsidence? Very little indeed.
When the Coal-Mining (Subsidence) Act, 1950, was debated in this House on Second Reading, Viscount Bracken—Mr. Bracken as he then was—either by caprice or choice of circumstances, found himself in the hierarchy of the Tory Party, and he was the leading speaker for the Tory Party on that occasion.

Mr. Nabarro: I supported him.

Mr. Neal: No wonder. In all my diligent researches into the Official Report I have not discovered a speech so full of vituperative adjectives against a piece of new and helpful legislation as were used on that occasion. The main criticism about the 1950 Act by the Tory Party was its inadequacy.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew): We cannot go back on the 1950 Act, whether it was adequate or inadequate. That does not arise on this Order.

Mr. Nabarro: Do not wander so far from the point.

Mr. Neal: The hon. Gentleman wanders much further than that from the point.
The Minister admitted in his speech that he could have made a better Order than the one he has presented. Indeed, he has tried to make amends by getting the Coal Board to agree to some arrangement whereby he can help the worst cases until the year's end. What about after the year's end? Householders will have no statutory right to claim under that arrangement with the Coal Board. It


will be merely at their good pleasure whether or not they afford relief for repairs to houses that have subsided if they are over the agreed assessment figure.
This Order comes into operation on 1st April. Perhaps the date is not inappropriately chosen. The Government are making April fools of many of the householders in this country and the local authorities who expected to receive something from this Order.

10.34 p.m.

Mr. D. M. Keegan: I am very grateful indeed for the opportunity of saying only a very few words about this question, which affects my constituency to a large extent. I think that my right hon. Friend said that there are some 4,000 houses now which were previously within the scope of the 1950 Act which, owing to the difficulty that he has explained, are now outside the scope of compensation.

Mr. Aubrey Jones: No, Sir. The figures were: 3,000 formerly, protected now excluded; around the figure—and it is a rough one—of 4,000 formerly not enjoying protection now protected.

Mr. Keegan: I am sorry that I got the figures the wrong way round. There are now unprotected by the new Order 3,000 houses which were heretofore within the scope of the Act. I regret to say that 83 of those houses are in my constituency.
I ask the Minister to remember that there are hard cases under this Order. I appreciate his great difficulty in arriving at a figure which would satisfy everybody—obviously that is impossible in the circumstances—but I ask him, if he is imprisoned by the Act, to make sure that he is not imprisoned for life, and to give further consideration to this matter at a later date.
I am glad that there is now an undertaking by the Coal Board in the terms mentioned by my right hon. Friend. I should like to know from my right hon. Friend whether that changes the onus of proof that is laid down in the Coal-Mining (Subsidence) Act, 1950. Under that Act the onus of proof was always upon the National Coal Board to say that the damage was not caused by mining subsidence. In any cases which may arise under the undertaking which

has been given by the Coal Board, is the onus of proof in the same place or is it upon those who seek to say that the damage is caused by coal mining subsidence?

10.36 p.m.

Mr. James Harrison: In my division and the surrounding district it is felt that this Order will do justice temporarily. The Minister has told us tonight that this Order is a temporary expedient, and that we shall have another statement after the Easter Recess covering the other forms of property. If I have misunderstood the Minister I should like to be corrected. I understood him to say that after the Easter Recess it is his intention to make another statement on the general question of subsidence.

Mr. Aubrey Jones: indicated assent.

Mr. Harrison: The Minister also indicated that it would be advisable, in view of that statement that he is going to make, not to mention the deficiencies of this Order with respect to other properties. Therefore, we can describe it as a temporary expedient pending other proposals from the Government to cover other forms of property.
This matter has been considered very carefully by my hon. Friends and myself. I find that 92,115 properties in the City of Nottingham—13,365 extra dwellinghouses—are covered that were not covered previously. To that extent, we feel that as a temporary expedient there is justice in this Order.
Hucknall is one of the districts which has suffered most from subsidence during the last twelve months. I gather that my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Mr. B. Taylor) thinks that that is questionable. At any rate, I can say that Hucknall has suffered very severely indeed. In Hucknall more houses will be covered under this Order than before. Therefore, we cannot complain much in that respect.
The increase from £32 to £50 is one of 53 per cent. In the area which I represent valuations of dwelling-houses have been increased by amounts varying between 14 per cent. and 30 per cent., so we are comparing them with an increase under the Order of 33⅓ per cent.

Mr. Keegan: Surely an increase of £18 from £32 to £50 is one of over 50 per cent.

Mr. Harrison: The increase is one of nearly 50 per cent.

Mr. Nabarro: It is 56¼ per cent.

Mr. Harrison: The increased coverage exceeds the increases in valuation.
I want to mention property which is not in my division but in that of the hon. Member for Nottinghamshire, South (Mr. Keegan). I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will join me in thanking the Minister for the information which he gave about that.

10.42 p.m.

Mr. Kenneth Pickthorn: I had hitherto supposed that I yielded to no man in my enthusiasm for Her Majesty's present advisers and particularly for the right hon. Gentleman in charge of this Order, but I am bound to to confess that I am slightly less enthusiastic than the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. J. Harrison). I think that this Order ought to be accepted, but I think it ought to be accepted with less enthusiasm. I do not think the argument sound that, because the Order covers more houses hitherto uncovered than the number of houses hitherto covered which it now uncovers, therefore it is just and right. I do not think that that will quite do, though I quite see that in these matters justice is bound to be to some extent rough.
I thought it a little ungenerous on the part of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Neal) to speak of crumbs from the Tory table, because this not very well baked nor very easily distributable loaf came from hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, and we are here engaged in discussing an Order which is necessarily within the Statute as they passed it in spite of criticism and opposition from some hon. Members on this side of the House, including the hon. Member who is now reduced to silence by his superior duties in the Whip's Office and who still represents, as he then did, Rushcliffe. Rushcliffe in those days contained the eighty-four houses, or whatever the number is, spoken of by my hon. Friend the Member for Notting-

ham, South (Mr. Keegan). I think that their pressure in this matter ought perhaps to be recorded.
I quite understand that it is not now in order to discuss whether a ceiling should have been fixed by that Statute or whether, if a ceiling should have been fixed, it should have been this ceiling. I do not think it follows from that that the Minister has either no discretion at this stage or that he has no duty to anybody who may be disadvantaged at this stage.
If that had been the intention of the Statute, it would have been perfectly possible to provide for a change in the hypothetical future, which is now the actual present, by a simple arithmetical formula. It would have been perfectly possible to provide that when rateable values shifted, then the figure taken to mark the ceiling should be shifted in exact arithmetical proportion to the shift of the rateable value; or it could have been done with slightly more elaboration.
But that was not what was done. As the thing was in fact done—and done, as I say, by the Statute for which the Socialist Party are responsible—it leaves us, at this stage, I think, compelled to consider the question which I will now try to indicate to the House—and it is this: it must be presumed that everyone whose presumable need entitled him to privilege under the principal Act in this last six years has a legitimate expectation that the need should continue to be presumed and that he should continue to have the privilege. The argument, which I can put I think without venturing near the rules of order, for the ceiling must be that one cannot assist everyone or for some reason one does not want to do it for everyone, but one will do it for those where the need is greater; and that the test of need shall be the rateable value.
Under the Statute based on that principle there are, we have been told, 3,000 houses which for six years have had this privilege, the protection of this statutory right, over and above any common law or contractual right which they may have had. If legislators may be presumed always to intend the consequences of their own acts, it must have been clear in the intention of the Statute that those people should have this privilege.
Those people are going to lose this privilege. I quite understand that they are a small proportion of the whole; I had heard before that they were something under 1 per cent., and we have heard tonight—and I have no doubt that the Minister's figures are right—that they are even less than that and that 99·9 per cent. are all right. I will leave it to the hon. Member for Nottingham, North to work out what percentage is still left not all right. But as long as there is a percentage which was covered by the Statute for six years and which under the Order will cease to be covered, then there is plainly, I think, a matter of complaint.
The Minister has now told us two things about that complaint. First, he has told us that he has endeavoured to alleviate it for the current calendar year by arranging with the National Coal Board that it shall treat it kindly. I do not know what the Board's limit of expenditure for that purpose is; my recollection—one of the Ministers will no doubt correct me if I am wrong—is that the National Coal Board is provided with £2 million for the general purpose.

Mr. John Cronin: A quarter of a million pounds.

Mr. Nabarro: Perhaps my hon. Friend will permit me to intervene. I have just looked at the Act. It was £1,500,000 for the period between the passing of the Act and the end of 1952 and thenceforward £250.000 a year.

Mr. Pickthorn: I looked at the Act before dinner, and I have now got the figures wrong in my recollection. But it does not affect the argument. The fact is that the National Coal Board has well-understood and defined resources for dealing with these matters in general. For this small part of the matter in particular—this·1 per cent.—I do not know, and I do not suppose anybody knows, what, if any, limits of expenditure the National Coal Board has, and if it is not impossible to answer it, I think that is a question which ought to be answered.
The second thing which the Minister said to us was that, for the rest, he would tell us more after Easter. I am quite prepared to believe in his good will and in his power to act properly after Easter, but we ought now to tell him that so

long as any house which had protection under the Statute—and which therefore has a legitimate expectation that that protection will continue—is without protection, he has a duty to see that that protection is reintroduced.

10.50 p.m.

Mr. John Cronin: I propose to speak very briefly this evening. I am sure that that statement will be welcomed in view of the lateness of the hour. I am also sorry that there is this necessity for brevity, because the Order contains nothing which will be helpful to the general problem. It merely restores the status quo in a very rough way. We welcome the Order very much in the way that a man dying of starvation would welcome a solitary potato crisp; it is not satisfying, but it is better than nothing. We look forward to the Minister's statement after Easter, in the hope that it will give us some satisfaction, although from our previous experience that does not seem very likely. In matters appertaining to subsidence it is always a case of "jam tomorrow" but never "jam today."
The Minister said—with some satisfaction, I thought—that he was a prisoner of the Act. I do not think that he is nearly so completely a prisoner as he suggests because, from my reading of the Act, he is entitled to change the figure of rateable value as much as he likes. He has admitted that about 3,000 owners of houses will now have substantial injustice done to them in that they were previously covered by the Act and will no longer be covered as a result of the Order. That is scarcely a matter for congratulation. It is most unsatisfactory for a Government Department completely to alter the conditions under which people are compensated. The ancient Romans had a saying:
Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.
The Minister says, "Let injustice be done even if the floor falls from under us," That is scarcely a satisfactory state of affairs.
In my constituency subsidence is a very serious problem, and as far as I can see the Order will make very little difference to the present position. In Ashby-de-la-Zouch rural district 31 houses were formerly not covered by the £32, now there are 26 not covered by the £50. In


Ashby Woulds urban district—which is suffering from the intolerable burden of spending a 3s. rate upon damage from subsidence—conditions will remain exactly as they are at present. We hope that the Minister will help us in this matter, and that we shall have a satisfactory statement from him after Easter.
I think that I shall be in order if I refer to the psychological effects of the Order upon the mining community. We frequently hear that miners must produce more coal—and it seems to be a desperately important matter for the country's economy that they should do so. I do not think that there is another section of the community which works so hard and carries the country so much upon its back as does the mining community; nor is there one which receives so little praise.
The miners will regard this Order with great disappointment. They are faced with a situation in which many of their houses are tumbling about their ears; they are carrying an intolerable rate burden, and their sons and daughters are having great trouble in getting new houses because then local authorities cannot find enough money to cover the additional expense involved.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member is now trenching upon ground that is covered by the Act. The only question involved in this Order is whether the rateable value to be taken for the purpose of the National Coal Board's assessments should be £32 or £50. I cannot connect that small point with the hon. Gentleman's argument.

Mr. Cronin: I was referring to the psychological effect of the Order upon my constituents. The mining community want fair play. If the country wants them to work to the maximum it must give the miners a square deal.

10.56 p.m.

Mr. Tom Brown: The Order must be taken in conjunction with the Revaluation Act, 1953. The Minister referred to a "common agreement" to cover certain classes of property. Will he convey that agreement, entered into by the National Coal Board and himself, to the regional estate agents who have to operate the Order and the agreement?

If he will give an undertaking to do so there will be a degree, but only a degree, of satisfaction.
I start under a double handicap. One is the limitation of time for debating the Order. It would have been good to debate all the factors which arise from the damage done by mining subsidence. We have been waiting a long time for it.

Mr. Speaker: It does not arise on this Order.

Mr. Brown: I was pointing out a handicap. I will leave it there.
The next handicap is that many of us are experiencing the narrowness of the debate and cannot ventilate all our grievances. There is evidence that hon. Members would like to expand many points in the debate.
How has the Department arrived at the increased figure of £50? The Minister referred to "rounding off" at £50, but rounding off does not provide a fair way of arriving at an estimate of the valuation of damaged property. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. J. Harrison) said he welcomed the Order; I do not support him in that. There is great difference in valuations from area to area, and what may be satisfactory to Nottingham, North may be quite unsatisfactory to my constituency and to Lancashire. Therefore I do not think the rounding-off process is a fair way of arriving at a figure which could bring the property under the 1950 Act—

Mr. J. Harrison: Will my hon. Friend allow me? It is easy to make mistakes on these hundred and one different estimates from town to town, but I went through the White Paper on the distribution of rateable values, and in my assessment of the figure of valuation for private dwellings the figure which I mentioned was never exceeded throughout that list. That is how I came to that conclusion.

Mr. Brown: That may be so, but the White Paper does not always contain the exact method of the policy pursued by local authorities on assessing the valuation of property. They differ.
I should like to ask the Minister one or two questions. How has the Department arrived at the figure of £50? Is it


guesswork? How has it arrived at the figure of £50 to protect the small property owner whose property has suffered because of mining subsidence? For I find—and this should have been the basis on which the calculation by which the £32 was increased to £50 should have been made—that the rateable value in England and Wales, as referred to in this Order, will increase by 72 per cent. on 1st April this year over what it was on 1st April, 1955.
The total rateable value on 1st April, 1955, on which this Order is based, was £361,818,059. It will be increased to £622,947,351 on 1st April, 1956, or 72 per cent. if we look at the rateable value of Lancashire, one of the oldest mining areas in the country, we find the increase of the rateable value will go up about 56·9 per cent. On 1st April, 1955, it was £13,332,629, but on 1st April, 1956, it will have gone up to £21,500,000. Therefore, I ask how the Department has arrived at the figure of £50.
My second question has been partly answered, but I do not think it satisfies hon. Members on this side of the House. Has the Department had any consultations with the executive committee of the U.D.C. Association and the Association of Municipal Corporations? If so, when did they take place, who were the delegation, who were the gentlemen they met, and what were the results of the deliberations?
During the weekend, being aware that this Order was coming forward, I made some inquiries among a number of authorities in my division to find out what would be the effect of this Order on houses of £32 rateable value. I discovered that in a number of cases the rateable value will go up by 100 per cent. A house the present rateable value of which is £31 or £32 will have a new rateable value of £62. Then we shall find that owing to the increased rateable value they will be unprotected under this Order. That is a serious situation.
I do not like the Minister's reference to some houses going outside the protection of the Act and others being brought in. The desire of the House and of the Turner Committee was that all should be brought in and none left out—but this Order does not do that. Property the rateable value of which is to be

increased from £32 to £50 and more will remain unprotected by the Order. That is a very serious matter in the mining areas.
Let it be remembered by hon. Members on both sides of the House that many of the houses which will be unprotected—and a good few of those that will be given medium protection—belong to the men who work in the pits. They bought them with their hard-earned wages. It will be a sorry state of things if the men who have mined the coal which has caused the subsidence should find themselves in difficulty because of it.
From the enactment of the 1950 Act up to 1954 the number of houses damaged by mining subsidence was 12,000, and the Minister claims that the Order will exclude only 400. I should also like to ask if it is not possible for the Minister to instruct his regional estate officers to deal more expeditiously and generously with the claims that are coming in. The regional estate officers are the men who have to administer the Act and who will have to operate this Order. At present there is a regular tug-of-war going on in every mining area as to the correct assessment of mining subsidence damage, and our people are suffering great domestic inconvenience because assessments cannot be agreed. In passing, I may mention that one such officer whose name was Whittaker could never assess the damage at more than £25, and at last he came to be known as "£25 Whittaker."

Mr. Pickthorn: Make him Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Mr. Brown: My final point is that in some cases we are finding that when a damage figure has been agreed, and the builders and contractors and the plasterers have done the repairs, the estate officer—

Mr. Speaker: Order. This matter is not really covered by the Order at all. The Order only fixes a figure, and these questions of administration are not included.

Mr. Brown: I am very sorry, Mr. Speaker, but one is tempted. I live in an area in which this state of affairs applies every week of my life. I see it right and left, north and south, east and west, and when I start to speak on the subject I have to ventilate my feelings.


Whilst we do not accept the Order in its entirety we shall not vote against it—if I may be allowed to say so. Nevertheless, there will be a first-class row in this House unless we can have legislation to cover all damage by mining subsidence.

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not covered by the Order at all.

11.10 p.m.

Mr. Gerald Nabarro: I wish to speak briefly about this Order because, in common with a number of my hon. Friends, I was intimately concerned with every stage of the 1950 Act; and I want to say that my right hon. Friend has been a good deal more than generous in his treatment of the figures in this Order. In fact, an increase in the rateable value to £50 is an increase of the order of 56 per cent.; and the overall increase of rateable values for houses which come within the ambit of subsidence conditions amounts to about 40 per cent.
Therefore, a comparison of these two figures makes it abundantly clear that my right hon. Friend has taken into account about 12½ or 13 per cent. more than he need have done in the application of this Order.

Mr. Neal: Could the hon. Gentleman tell the House from where he derives his figure of a 40 per cent, increase?

Mr. Nabarro: The figure came from the Minister. My right hon. Friend stated that this was a 40 per cent. increase for those houses which are within the general ambit of subsidence conditions. If we are to have a blanket formula for adjusting these rateable value figures, then this, as has been said, may be the only rod that can be applied; and it must be conceded that the Minister has behaved very generously in this regard. If the more ingenious formula of my hon. Friend the Member for Carlton (Mr. Pickthorn) were taken as an alternative it might prove a better alternative, but the fact is that the Socialist Government wrote a formula into the Act of 1950; and it ill accords with their principles and traditions—if they have any—now to say that the formula should be departed from in one of the first Orders which has been made as a variation of the main provisions. The Minister has behaved with scrupulous regard for those provisions, and with considerable generosity.

11.13 p.m.

Mr. G. H. Oliver: I should not have intervened at this late hour if my constituency had not been badly affected by mining subsidence. I share the view expressed by the hon. Member for Carlton (Mr. Pickthorn). I recall the negotiations which took place when the 1950 Act was being formulated; and it was then acknowledged that protection would be given to those houses which came within the £32 rateable value in respect of any subsequent alteration in rating. That was the intention, and I confess that I do not understand the point raised by the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) when he speaks of the formula having been written into the Act by the Socialist Government.
The only formula written in was the power to substitute one figure for another. The question is what that figure should be. We say that £50 is too low, and I would prefer the adoption of the formula suggested by the hon. Member for Carlton. But properties covered by the Statute, and the owners of those properties, have a vested right, and have had for five or six years. By reason of the revaluation, properties which will now fall outside the protection are subjected, not only to the loss of a considerable right, but to a liability the extent of which they are not in a position to judge. No one can judge.
In the five years since the passing of the Act properties have changed hands in the knowledge that there is protection under the Coal-Mining (Subsidence) Act. Through the decision made tonight some of these properties will no longer have that protection. Therefore they are subjected to a liability which may be overwhelming, as those of us who represent mining constituencies know to our regret.
I was surprised when the Minister said that such a small number would be excluded. If that is so, why could not the figure be increased? Among the owners in that small number excluded will be some who are protected by common law rights, apart from statutory rights. So the number becomes negligible as a factor. If it is possible to come to the compromise arrangements which the Minister has apparently reached with the National Coal Board, why is it necessary to confine the compromise arrangements to the end of this year? Why cannot


that arrangement cover the houses which have been covered up to 1st April, 1956? I have seen houses which have partly fallen down. If owners have to bear such a loss as that, this decision means that many of them will be in a terrible situation.
I heard what the Minister had to say about a statement which he would make after Easter. I did not understand him to mean that that was the problem which he would deal with after Easter, but rather the problem of the wider issue of the liabilities of the local authorities. If it is possible to make some provision for the comparatively small number of properties which by this Order will be excluded from the protection of the Coal-Mining (Subsidence) Act, I hope the Minister will have second thoughts.

11.19 p.m.

Mr. Stephen Swingler: This Order has confronted us with a dilemma. That arises partly from the nature of the 1950 Act. I hope it will be legitimate to recall that that Act was acknowledged to be merely a first instalment of a series of recommendations by a Committee about which, at that time, the House of Commons was regarded as being unanimous. The recommendations were to be carried out over the years after the passage of the 1950 Act. That Act contained an arbitrarily-fixed ceiling. I do not think that anyone then imagined that in 1956 the House would be discussing an Order of this kind. It was then thought that the uananimous suggestion of the Turner Committee that there ought to be a comprehensive and universal scheme of compensation for mining subsidence damage would have been implemented in the following five years.

Mr. Speaker: It seems to me that the hon. Gentleman is drawing attention to defects in the 1950 Act, but we must accept it as it is; we cannot go back on that on this Order.

Mr. Swingler: I appreciate that, and I am sorry if I exceeded the bounds of order, but one has to get this discussion in perspective, and one can only see why we are presented with the dilemma of this narrow discussion, in which the Minister talks of himself as a prisoner of the 1950 Act, by recalling the situation.
Our dilemma is made more difficult by the fact that we know that the Minister is to make a statement after Easter about these wider recommendations, and it is difficult to express some firm opinions about certain aspects of this Order until one knows exactly what the Minister will say, five and a half years after the Turner Report, about the other recommendations, because one's opinion of this Order is bound to be affected by what is to be done in other respects.
I should have thought that, bearing in mind the background of the principal Act and the spirit of Parliament at the time it was passed, it would be acknowledged on all sides that we should not do in this Order less than the 1950 Act intended to do. I should have thought that that would have been agreed on all sides, that we should have taken the 1950 Act with the £32 rateable value as an absolute minimum. Therefore, I am dismayed to hear that one of the results of this Order is to exclude some of the houses that would be covered by the 1950 Act. That would appear to me to be almost illegal or to make this Order improper. It means to say, on the Minister's own admission, that we are not carrying out the intentions of the 1950 Parliament.
If we are not, by this Order, continuing to cover all the houses that were covered under the 1950 Act, we are placing a limitation on the intentions of Parliament at that time in deciding on a first instalment in the implementation of the Turner Report, and that would seem to me to be utterly wrong. I think it is right that we should err on the side of generosity. After all, it is not frightfully generous. We have not gone any way further than the 1950 Act towards implementing the Turner Report; we are not being frightfully generous at all. Therefore, we should be more generous.
We are certainly being extremely mean if, in the course of raising the ceiling from £32 to £50, we are actually excluding some of those who are covered by the 1950 Act. I should have thought that it was a very serious situation indeed for Parliament to approve an Order under the principal Act which has the effect, in certain individual cases, of frustrating the intentions of the Act itself.
Whilst on one side I welcome the fact that, quite incidentally, a certain number of householders will happen to be brought in and covered for compensation under this Order, as a further step on the road towards the implementation of the Turner Report, which is what we really want, I am extremely regretful and very dismayed to hear that some will actually be excluded, because I think it is very wrong to make a Statutory Order under an Act of Parliament which has the effect of putting on that Statute a limitation which was never intended at that time.

11.24 p.m.

Mr. Aubrey Jones: I have been gratified to find that support for this Order has been universal, though it ran, I am afraid, through a very wide gamut of adjectives. In the case of the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. J. Harrison) the support was most enthusiastic—possibly over-enthusiastic. IL the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Carlton (Mr. Pickthorn) the support was qualified by criticism which I concede was measured and restrained. In the case of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Neal) and the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Cronin) the criticism, I am afraid, was savage and fierce.

Mr. J. Harrison: May I intervene, as the right hon. Gentleman mentioned me personally? My enthusiasm arose in the main from the fact that he promised us a comprehensive statement on this matter after Easter.

Mr. Jones: I assure the hon. Gentleman I am not quarrelling with him.

Mr. Cronin: I hope the right hon. Gentleman will reconsider the word "savage."

Mr. Jones: The main criticism was on whether or not the figure of £50 was enough. I should first address myself to the question put by the hon. and learned Member for Ilkeston (Mr. Oliver), namely how did I arrive at the figure of £50? There is no exact method of arriving at that figure. Rating assessments, as I said in my opening remarks, have gone upwards in varying degrees in the mining areas. They have not gone up, as has been repeatedly said on the

other side of the House, by as much as an average of 70 per cent. All assessments in general have possibly gone up by 70 per cent. However, I am not concerned with all assessments in general. All I am concerned with is amending a figure relating to houses in mining areas.

Mr. David Grenfell: The right hon. Gentleman starts from the basis that compensation should be universal?

Mr. Jones: No, that is a much wider question going far beyond this Order. The average increase of rating assessments for houses in mining areas is somewhere between 40 per cent. and 45 per cent.

Mr. Nabarro: That is what I said.

Mr. Jones: In other words, in the light of this change, the new figure comparable to the old figure of £32 would be between £45 and £50. I rounded that figure off at the higher level of £50. Should I have gone much higher? The extreme in this respect was presented by the hon. Member for Loughborough. He went so far as to say that the Act empowered me to prescribe any figure. In other words, if I were to take him literally, I could implement the Turner Report merely by changing the figure in this Order. That is a most far-fetched contention. I have got to put it like that to show the utter nonsense of such an argument.

Mr. Cronin: The only purpose of my remark was to show that the right hon. Gentleman could have raised the figure so as not to exclude 3,000 people from the effect of the Act.

Mr. Jones: I am glad to see that the hon. Gentleman is bringing down his claim, but the original claim was as I stated.
Disregarding that fact, could I have gone as far as has now been suggested by the hon. Member for Loughborough, by the hon. and learned Member for Ilkeston and my hon. Friend the Member for Carlton? Could I have gone so far as to include everybody now covered? Most emphatic opinions have been expressed on that subject. It is a matter of legal interpretation. The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Swingler) suggested that I was committing


an illegality by excluding these people. On the contrary; it has been put to me most forcibly by my legal advisers that I should be committing an illegality were I to include all these people. I have no alternative but to abide by the advice of my legal advisers. It is in that very real sense that I describe myself, for the purposes of this Order, as the prisoner of the Act, and all I am concerned with tonight is the Order.
Having said that, I should like to express my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Carlton for the kind words which he used about myself. But I should like to add that I thought he did me a little less than justice in suggesting that I was justifying the Order by saying that although it excluded 3,000 it brought in another 4,000 to offset the 3,000. I was not pleading that fact in justification of the Order or in extenuation of the exclusion of certain people. I gave the figures to describe exactly what happened as a result of the Order, but I will go so far as to say to my hon. Friend that I have great sympathy with him when he says that those who have hitherto enjoyed protection under the Act have a certain expectation to the continued enjoyment of protection. That is what I feel.
That was why I said that I would take into account that fact when I made my statement after the Easter Recess. In other words, the criticism which has been made of the Order is not in fact a criticism of the Order: it is a criticism of the piece of legislation about which we are talking. It was inherent in a piece of legislation which endeavoured to draw a distinction between a small house and a not-so-small house and at the same time to define a small house by using the measuring rod of rateable value. It was inherent in that legislation that houses should be continually coming within its scope and going out of it. That has been happening continually over the past six years. That I cannot help. I will take this fact into account in making the statement after Easter.
Perhaps that is the best token that I can give to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Keegan), who pleaded that I should endeavour to release myself from my prison as soon as possible. So far as I can remedy the

defect in another way, by other means than this Order, that I will most certainly do.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Draft Coal-Mining (Subsidence) (Rateable Value) Order, 1956, a copy of which was laid before this House on 8th March, be approved.

Orders of the Day — KITCHEN AND REFRESHMENT ROOMS (HOUSE OF COMMONS)

Mr. Remnant discharged from the Select Commitee; Mr. Burden added.—[Mr. Oakshott.]

Orders of the Day — BEE-KEEPING

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Oakshott.]

11.32 p.m.

Mr. Peter Smithers: The subject I wish to discuss this evening is that of honey and the stocks of bees at present in England and Wales. This is not a commodity of great interest, I imagine, to the National Farmers' Union; it is not a Price Review commodity; it is not a commodity, on the whole, produced by very large-scale operators, and I am not particularly concerned tonight with the large number of amateurs like myself who keep bees simply because we enjoy doing it.
I am concerned with the great majority, as I believe they are, of bee keepers who keep a few bees in order to bring in a little extra money. They are people like farm workers, village postmen or schoolmistresses—people in the countryside. I believe it is a fact that of the 70,000 or so bee keepers in the country, not more than 4,000 have more than ten stocks. That makes quite clear the character of the people with whom I am dealing. They are the small part-time producers.
When these people run into difficulties with bee-keeping, especially financial difficulties, they do not protest and hold demonstrations. It is not their livelihood; there is no reason why they should. They merely give up bee-keeping. It is the decline in the number of stocks of bees kept that I want to bring to the atten-


tion of my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture.
Since the end of the war, the figures prepared in my county show that the number of stocks has declined by about 50 per cent., and even since 1952, according to the Minister's own figures, there has been a considerable further decline.
Why this decline has taken place is arguable. I know about the weather; of course that has reduced the number of stocks of bees. I know that after the war, because of the jam shortage many people kept bees in order to help out their family supplies, and, I am afraid, sometimes in order to use the sugar which the bees should have had. I know that the Ministry has been doing a great deal to eliminate disease, which has taken its toll. I know that, in spite of these facts, the 1955 crop was bigger than the 1952 crop—something which is not surprising to anybody who realises that the product of a stock can vary from nothing to 120 lb.
What I want to draw to the Minister's attention is, first of all, that the costs of bee-keeping have risen considerably. I have in my hand some figures supplied by one of the leading makers of beehives, which show, for example, that the cost of wood for hives, which was £45 per standard in 1946, is £175 per standard in 1956. Other costs have risen correspondingly.
Secondly, the contribution which can be obtained from bee-keeping towards the family exchequer is relatively much smaller in the post-war period, when wages are higher and the standard of living has risen. We have all these factors—increased costs and less relative productivity from honey—which mean that people are not quite so keen to keep bees simply as a financial proposition.
What I think has been disastrous is the fluctuation in honey prices. When there is a bad honey year, honey prices in the country are good. There were three such bad years running until last year, and at times, in some of them, honey could be sold at 6s. 6d. per 1b.; but then the producers had no honey, or very little honey, to sell. Then came last year, the good year, when the producers had some

honey; and prices promptly fell to 2s. 6d. in many of the country villages.
This extreme variation in prices means that unless the small bee-keeper has the patience of Job he can look for a very long time ahead without seeing much chance of getting his money, or even his expenses, back again. I want to ask the Minister whether there is not some way in which we can iron out some of the differences which occur from season to season in honey prices and thus encourage an increase in the number of stocks of bees. If we had a bee population back to that which we had immediately after the war—perhaps rather a lot to hope for—we should have about £1½ million worth of extra produce in honey and wax.
In addition, we should not have to import so much honey. As my hon. Friend knows. imported honey brings with it foul brood. One has only to throw an empty imported honey tin out for it to attract neighbouring bees to come and clean it and to become infected with foreign foul brood. A reduction of imports would therefore be a good thing from that point of view.
I believe that we could encourage the keeping of more stocks of bees if we could help the producer with price stability and if we could help him to produce better quality. In Hampshire, with this in mind, we have been considering a draft scheme which is being circulated at the moment to see what the reactions are to it. Perhaps I may read part of it to the House, and perhaps my hon. Friend will comment on it.
… there would be a small committee of bee-keepers, under the chairmanship of someone nominated by the Ministry, to administer the co-operative … Premises with storage and bottling facilities would be needed. Bee-keepers in the county would be encouraged to maintain their private local sales. In glut seasons they would be invited to put their honey, surplus to the local demand, in 28 lb. tins. This would be bought at an appropriate price and held by the co-operative. In bad seasons, the honey would be released either to the original producer or other producers, bottled or in tins, at an agreed figure, or sold by the co-operative to retailers. Those participating in the scheme would be expected to conform to prices recommended by the committee in their private sales.
Of course, if they sold above the committee's price in scarcity years that would not matter.
The draft scheme continues:
As a rough estimate, the capital required to set up such a co-operative in a county would be between £5,000 and £10,000. Most of this would be needed to purchase the surplus in good seasons, and would be recovered when that honey was disposed of in times of scarcity. The co-operative would be non-profit-making, but it should be so run that the costs of administration were recovered over a period.
I do not pretend that that is a complete scheme, or that it would prove workable in the precise form suggested. It has merely been put forward in our county in order to test the reactions of bee-keepers, to see if they think it is workable. If it were found to be workable it would be a very valuable step towards producing honey of a better quality, which would therefore be more marketable. Honey produced under primitive conditions, as much village honey is, could be processed and graded in a proper way, and it would then be more valuable when marketed. I hope that it may be possible to start a pilot experiment of this description in some county, and if it should be in my county of Hampshire I should be the more pleased.
What am I asking of the Minister? I readily concede that the responsibility for an initiative is not his in the first place, but his Ministry can be very helpful in these matters, and I hope that he will be able to say tonight that he would like to see some enterprise of this kind considered and if, upon careful examination, it should prove worthy of undertaking, that he would be willing to give such support to it as his Ministry is able to afford.
I suggest that he has a direct responsibility for food production. Here is one of our national crops going partly unharvested. All that is required is a little organisation and a little cooperative effort and long-term thinking in order to increase very considerably the product of this crop. Should we be able to achieve this aim, I am sure that the Minister and all those concerned in the honey-producing industry will have made a very valuable contribution to the economy of the countryside as well as to that of the nation.

11.42 p.m.

Mr. Brian Harrison: I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Smithers) for raising this

subject, because it is an important one. I keep bees as a hobby and as a weekend relaxation, but I want to talk about them tonight from the point of view of commercial seed growers and fruit producers. I recommend bee-keeping to anybody who leads a fairly busy life, because when one is manipulating a hive it provides a completely adequate reason for refusing to answer the telephone—and there is a noticeable reluctance on the part of anybody but the most thickskinned visitor to talk to one when one has a hive opened.
In Essex, where my constituents and I live, the number of stocks appears to be going down very considerably, and has deteriorated most severely over the last five years. According to the figures of the Essex Bee-Keepers' Association, which is my only source of information, despite its increased activities its membership has gone down by about half.
This brings me to my first request. Can my hon. Friend's Department produce, from time to time, a census of the numbers of stocks of bees, and make the result available so that people can assess the importance of the decline?
It is no good knowing these figures or having the requisite number of hives unless they are healthy.
A number of public-spirited persons with considerable skill and knowledge act as inspectors for the Ministry, but does the Minister think they are sufficiently well paid for so important a job?
In the commercial seed-growing and fruit-producing areas it is absolutely essential to have sufficient bees. Otherwise we should have the conditions that existed in a development area in Africa where D.D.T. spraying to kill off unpleasant insects also killed the bees, with the result that crops failed because they were not fertilised. Would the Minister please consider these points. If stocks of bees fall too low we may well have a deterioration in yields of crops, and we might then get a negative answer to the famous question about the church clock and "Is there honey still for tea?"

11.47 p.m.

Mr. Godfrey Nicholson: Bee-keeping is a very much neglected branch of national agriculture. I am a very keen bee-keeper myself, so perhaps I am prejudiced. Not only can great


pleasure be got out of it, but a considerable commercial crop can be raised, and it is of great benefit to agriculture from the fertilising activity of bees.
This country should carry a much heavier bee population, and it is very largely in the hands of the Ministry whether that increase ever comes about. I do not think that the literature put out by the Department is good enough. Pamphlets put out, either by the Department or others, are always afraid to recommend a particular type of hive or a particular way of dealing with swarms. They leave everything benevolently vague.
I wish the Minister would appoint a committee to report on the most practical form of hive. I personally favour the "national" hive and think there is none better. I think that my way of dealing with swarms is up to date and successful. A standard hive should be officially recommended by the Ministry, and some method of dealing with swarms—I do not mean swarm control—should be universally recommended as simple and effective. Standard procedure should be laid down. The recommendations of the Ministry should, in short, be brought up to date.
The research station at Rothamsted does not seem to be doing very valuable work. It is too esoteric and scientific; it should have a commercial bias. I am not running down what is done there, but most people who buy the pamphlets are not made to feel that they would like to take up bee-keeping. If they do, they do not know where to start. I hope that the Minister will pay attention to these comments and try to do something real for bee-keeping. My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr. B. Harrison) said that stocks were falling in Essex; I think they are falling all over the country owing to the multiplicity of counsellors and of methods recommended.
As for the commercial return, no one will make there fortune out of keeping half a dozen hives, but one sometimes gets a bumper year. Last year I got 480 pounds of honey, averaging 80 pounds a hive, and the year before, a bad year, I had 20 pounds a hive average. So with a little care and good luck, which I have largely had, a certain

modest return can be got from beekeeping, and the greatest pleasure, amusement and recreation, physical and mental, in the true sense of the word. I suppose, like everyone with a hobby, one tends to ride it to death, but I recommend it as one of the most delightful hobbies that anyone can have, and I hope the Ministry will give a helping hand.

11.51 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of 'Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. G. R. H. Nugent): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Smithers) on his success in the ballot tonight, and in raising this very interesting subject.
Bees are not only fascinating and interesting, but they are extremely valuable both for the honey they produce and the function they perform of fertilizing trees and plants; and we have an interest, in the Ministry, from that point of view. I should say something too on the question of domestic food production policy.
We have a National Council for Domestic Food Production, and there we have a representative of the British Beekeepers' Association. We keep a general oversight of all domestic food production and make grants to bodies who need help, but generally our policy is to help these bodies to be independent and to conduct their own affairs and not to make them dependent on Government grants. I am sure this is the right approach, because, after all, whether in bee-keeping or in any other form of domestic food production these are individual efforts. They are part of people's private, personal lives, and people do not want the Government coming into this sphere.
Turning to the point raised by the hon. Members for Farnham (Mr. Nicholson) and Maldon (Mr. B. Harrison)—the question of literature—I will certainly look at the question and see if we can improve the position. My knowledge of beekeeping is not great, though I do keep two or three hives myself, but such knowledge as I have is sufficient to tell me that all bee-keepers do not think alike. If we were to be too precise in the advice we gave, I do not think we should please everyone, even though we should please the hon. Member for Farnham. But I will look at these pamphlets and see if we can introduce any


more precision into them. On the question of beginners, my hon. Friend will find in almost every county there is an officer of the county council, under the education authority, who is their beekeeping adviser, who is well able and of the right temperament to give the beginner the right advice and set him on the path to keeping bees.

Mr. Smithers: They are extraordinarily good.

Mr. Nugent: I am grateful for that aside. They certainly do their utmost to meet the varied needs they are called on to meet. It is certainly our wish to give all the help in any way we can to anyone starting.
Let me turn now to the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon. On his first point, we did conduct a census last year on a voluntary basis. It was done by the county committees, in connection with our foul brood control arrangements, and it is that census on which I am relying tonight for the figures I will give in a minute. I think we shall conduct another census this year, and as far as I know we shall be able to conduct one on this basis each year, so keeping an oversight on the bee population.
As to his second point, I agree that the honorarium paid to those public-spirited bee-keepers who play such an important part in foul-brood control, is very modest, and we certainly wish to recognise their very valuable help. We will therefore look at it again to see if we can make a small upward revision to bring the amount more into line with present day costs.
Thirdly, I should like to give the general figures of bee keeping to the House. It is true that the Essex figures seem to have gone down rather exceptionally, but the national figures are fairly re-assuring, more particularly when looked at against the 1925 figures, which appear in our earliest reliable record, the 1932 Report on the Marketing of Honey and Beeswax. In 1925 some 20,000 bee keepers were recorded, with some 70,000 colonies. In 1944–45 there were some 83,000 bee keepers and about 407,000 hives.
The figures remained of that order, with variations of about 10 per cent. up or down, remained for the next nine years until 1952–53, when sugar rationing came to an end. The primary significance of that event was that we no longer had the records which we had been able to keep when the owners of the bees registered their hives. The last figure we have is that for 1952–53 when there were some 80,000 bee-keepers and about 396,000 hives. The next available figure is that for last year, 1955, when there were nearly 72,000 keepers and roughly 305,000 hives, but we rather think that that figure is by no means complete, and the actual number might well be some 10 or 20 per cent. higher.

Mr. Nicholson: Can my hon. Friend say at what time of year the number of hives is returned?

Mr. Nugent: The work will be going on during the summer months in connection with foul-brood control. I could not now tell my hon. Friend the precise months, but if he wants the information I will send it to him.
We are fairly sure that these figures are on the low side, but in any event the census will probably be taken again this year and it may be possible to take one in most years. Last year followed three bad seasons, and the end of sugar rationing is not without significance in the picture. The figures during the rationing period may have been a little on the optimistic side. Taking those factors into account, the indication is that the bee population figures, especially when looked at against those of 1925, are really not showing an alarming trend. They are still high, and I do not think that we need feel that there is any danger arising from insufficient pollinators.
The importance of the bee population as pollinators is always in our mind, and with the use of modern insecticides must always be in mind. It is noteworthy that the people whose work is most dangerous to the bees through the use of insecticides—the fruit growers—are turning more and more to the use of selective insecticides which do their work but do not damage the bees. It is interesting in that connection to note that in Kent the fruit growers now pay £2 10s. a hive to have the bees moved in during the


blossom period to assist pollination. That is done, too, in Lincolnshire, where they pay £2 a hive. That all indicates that the fruit growers and the farmers realise that bees are their friends and that particular care should be used in the use of sprays. The danger of losing our pollinators, therefore, is not a big one.
Perhaps I may be allowed to say a brief word about honey production, and to congratulate my hon. Friend on the encouragement he is evidently giving in Hampshire by means of this co-operative scheme. Certainly, we should like to give it all the encouragement we can. But the initiative, as he rightly says, does

depend on the local bee keepers, and if they combine to help themselves in this way, they will find it to their advantage. After all, they will only be doing what the big commercial bee keepers do, namely, to carry over their stock from a good year like 1955 to another year. Honey will keep almost indefinitely if it is looked after, and we should be glad to help this scheme in any way we can. I would like to congratulate my hon. Friend on the lead he has given, and to say that we hope that the scheme may come to fruition.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at one minute past Twelve o'clock.